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WHEN AMERICA 
WAS NEW 



rUDORdfEMiCS 




Class _„ 

Book . 

GoRyii^htN^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




AN ATTACK ON THE SETTLERS BY THE INDIANS. 



Contents 



Preface vii 

I. The Planting of Virginia . . i 

Why America was discovered and settled. The 
first Enghsh settlement at Jamestown, and its 
early fortunes. The big plantations, and the 
dwellers on them. 

II. The First New Englanders . . 29 

The first New Knglanders come to Plymouth. 
Causes that sent settlers to America. The 
Pilgrims, and their story. The hardships of 
their voyage — piracy, stormy weather, dread 
of the sea's mystery. Settlement at I'lym- 
outh, and how they overcame dirticulties. 

III. The Different Settlers . . -59 

The sort of colonies that grew up, north and 
south. The coming of the Puritans. How 
they differed from the Pilgrims. Their wise 
management of affairs. Growth of the Mas- 
sachusetts settlement. The governing of the 
New England towns ; interference of the 
English with the Virginians and New Eng- 
landers. \Vhy this interference was unwise. 
The new conditions the colonists had to meet. 
The fighting against Indians, and other mat- 
ters the colonists must manage in their own 
ways. 

iii 



iv Contents 

IV. Marylanders and Dutch . . 79 

The Maryland Colony, and how it differed 
from Virginia and New England. Why 
it was tolerant. How it was governed. 
The Dutch Settlement at New Amsterdam, 
started as trading posts. Why it was not 
successful, and passed into the hands of 
the EngUsh. The value of the fur-trade, 
and how it made the French and Indians 
friendly alUes. The growth of commerce 
in America. The routes of travel, and of 
trade. Smuggling. 

V. New World Living . . . 104 

Making of homes in the New World, both 
north and south. The Virginian and the 
New Englander, making a living. The 
abundance of food. The nature of the 
Indians, and the conflicts with them. 
What was learned from them. The 
housewives and their work, and the work 
and play of the children. 

VI. Making the Homestead . i 30 

A settler's family in the woods. The story 
of a family and its homestead. Their 
work and their household tasks. The be- 
ginning of a farm in the north, and of a 
plantation in the south. Settlers who suc- 
ceeded and settlers who failed. The life 
in the settlements. Travel, work, house- 
hold furniture, and contrivances. 

VII. Manners AND Customs . . .155 

About the life in towns. The governing of 
the townspeople. What the towns were 
like, and the sort of people who lived in 
them. How their property was managed. 
The magistrates, and the keeping of order ; 
punishments. The colonies' law-makers. 



Contents v 

The rulers in England, and their govern- 
ing^ of the colonies. DitTerent ways of 
ruling the colonies. Tlie military forces, 
and how they fought the Indians. 

VIII. The Indoor Life . . . .172 

Inside the colonial houses. Tlie life of the 
inmates. Their meals and their hours. 
Their dress and ornaments. Their man 
ners and customs. The furniture, liglUs, 
and tires. Their kitchens and cooking. 

IX. \Vh.\t the Colonists Knew and 

Thought 192 

"What the colonists knew, and their ways of 
thinking. Astronomy and astrology ; minor 
superstitions, and cjueer iileas about na- 
ture. Notions of tiie unseen world, and 
belief in witchcraft. Heliefs about disease 
and medicine ; the colonial doctors and 
healers ; charms and herbs and magical 
remedies. The feelings of the colonists 
toward their rulers and men in authority. 
Their indifference to natural beauty. 
Their loyalty toward the ruling jwwers in 
Enj^'laml, lowartl foreign nations, and to- 
wartl the Imlian tribes. 

X. Books, Reading and Education . 216 

The colonists and their reading. What 
books they knew. The education of the 
young, in schools or at home. The hours 
of recreation. The amusements of old and 
young. The little time given to recrea- 
tion, and the slight interest in the arts or 
in literature. Their way of life as seen 
by visitors from abroad. 

XL Effects of the New Life . .235 

Nature of the men and women who began 
the American nation. How they were 
bettered by life in the new world. Exam- 



vi Contents 



pies in the southern colonies, and in the 
northern, showing the changes brought 
about by new conditions of life. How the 
children were brought up. How families 
became richer or poorer ; the first-comers 
and their successors. The division into 
classes, and its effect on the people. 

XII. The Women and Children . . 254 

The women and children. Their life and 
work. What the children were taught in 
different ranks of life. The public schools, 
teachers and pupils. The young people's 
life, north and south. Advantages of 
colonial children. 

XIII. Growth of a New People . . 268 

Differences between the old world and the 
new. What made the Americans a new 
people. The growing of the feeling of 
equality, and its causes. The interest of 
the Americans in matters of religion and 
government. The changes in language, 
new words and new ideas. Changes in 
costume and custom. Physical changes 
caused by life in a new country. The 
awakening of ambition by better chances 
in life. 

XIV. Independence and Union . . 288 

The making of the various colonists into one 
people. The growth of independence and 
love of freedom. The habit of acting to- 
gether. How Indian wars taught the 
colonists to unite. Most important events 
from the settlement of Jamestown to 1689. 
The nature of the American people as 
created by their history up to the begin- 
ning of the war between England and . 
France in 1689 — which ends the early 
period of colonial history. 



Preface 

THE time told of in this volume is that 
which covers the years of the seven- 
teenth century during which the first 
settlers came from the Old World to the New, 
made for themselves and their families rude 
homes in the wilderness, and, after long strug- 
gles, aided by help from across the ocean, at 
length found that they could hve and make self- 
supporting homes in this, then a new country. 

We shall learn why the first settlers chose to 
begin at certain parts of the coast ; we shall see 
how they managed to get a Hving ; how they 
met the hardships of their new life ; and what 
sort of men and women they became because of 
the kind of life they led. We shall see the little 
huts they first built giving way to better dwell- 
ings, the small settlements growing to villages 
and towns and even cities. There will be told 
how they made their living, what sort of homes 
they built, what work they did, and how they 
passed their hours of rest and amusement. 

We shall learn how they got along with one 
another, what they thought of the Indians, and 
vii 



viii Preface 

what came from the meeting of the two races. 
There are changes in their way of Hving to be 
told about, changes that came from the new con- 
ditions met with in the new land. We shall try- 
to learn about things that would have interested 
us had we lived during those trying years and 
helped in settling the country. We shall come 
with the very first who crossed the ocean mean- 
ing to make their homes here. We shall see 
them clear away the forest in order to make 
room for their houses and fields for their crops. 
We shall meet the Indian by day and by night, 
in peace and in a kind of warfare new to these 
comers from the Old World. 

We shall try to see what callings the Ameri- 
cans found would pay them best, what inventions 
they had to make to meet the new conditions of 
life where they had to do without many helps to 
which they had been used at home — to make 
bread without great mills to grind their flour, to 
build houses without boards and timbers ready 
shaped to their hands, to find or make for them- 
selves many articles of daily use, such as soap, 
sugar, candles and cloth, which they had been 
used to buy in well provided shops. 

And over all these difficulties we shall see 
them winning their way, not only to comfort, 



Preface ix 

but to happiness and prosperity. We shall see 
them begin a new nation in the wilderness and 
make this great land an abode ready for civilized 
men, for women and little children, instead of 
being a wild, unknown country where Indians 
lived and roved, leading a life almost ignorant of 
what these white men thought necessaries of life. 



When America Was New 

CHAPTER I 
THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 

ALL the histories now tell us that America 
had been found by many sea-faring men 
long before Columbus sailed from Spain ; 
but when Columbus crossed the ocean it was with 
a purpose of making use of his discovery. This 
was because the European people were eager to 
trade with the peoples of Asia, and the journey 
from Europe to Asia by way of the Mediterranean 
Sea and past Constantinople oraround Arabia had 
been closed by the Turks who fought the Chris- 
tian merchants, and when captured made slaves 
of them. 

The merchants of Europe looked for other 
routes to Asia, and in this way came to explore 
the ocean westward. Some explorers went south 
and some west, and Columbus in this search 
found the West Indies. Then all the men who 
knew about his success thought it would soon be 
easy to secure the silks, the pearls, the spices, the 
I 



2 When America Was New- 

rugs, and other valuable things they knew were 
to be had in China, Japan and India. But the 
few who had landed on the " West India " 
islands soon found out that if the new land was 
part of Asia, it was a savage and unsettled part — 
a wilderness. And meanwhile the sailors who 
had gone South, around Africa, had succeeded in 
getting to the real coast of India, and brought 
back pepper, spices, rich stuffs of silk and satin, 
ivory and bronzes to prove their success. This 
caused the early voyages to America to be less 
thought of, since the merchants of the time were 
not looking for new and unsettled lands, but for 
seaports with which to trade. 

It was not until many a long year afterward 
that America was known to be a new continent, 
and meanwhile no one had any idea of making a 
settlement on its shores except to trade with the 
natives or to gather some of the products of the 
land. There was some idea, too, of making the 
natives Christians. 

But one of the strongest motives was the long- 
ing to find gold and silver. 

To understand how it was brought about that 
the Spaniards sought gold in America we shall 
have to look back to the adventurer, Balboa, the 
discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. An Indian 



The Planting of Virginia 3 

chief one day told him that beyond the moun- 
tains to the westward was a great sea, bearing 
ships Hke those of the white men, and that the 
countries of this coast abounded in gold and 
silver. This caused Balboa to go westward, 
brought about the finding of the Pacific Ocean, 
and also put into the minds of the Spaniards the 
notion that the precious metals were plentiful in 
the New World. 

When Ponce de Leon came to Florida during 
the same year, 15 13, he also heard there that 
southward were lands rich in gold and silver and 
blessed by a perfect climate. De Leon attempted 
a settlement in Florida, but his men were driven 
away by the Indians, suffered greatly from ill- 
ness, and de Leon himself was wounded. So his 
attempt came to nothing. 

Mexico, discovered a few years later, seemed 
to promise the wealth of which the Spaniards 
were in search, and the great leader, Cortez, 
warred against the natives for two years, taking 
many of their towns. 

A Spanish expedition also began a settlement, 
in 1526, not far from what afterward became 
Jamestown, but it was a failure and abandoned. 

In short, the desire to find wealth and to make 
slaves, brought a number of military expeditions 



4 When America Was New 

from Spain and gave rise to most extravagant 
stories about the abundance of gold and silver 
among the Indians. Few of the stories are more 
interesting than that of Cabeza de Vaca, who, 
from 1527, wandered for nine years through the 
southwest picking up from the natives wild 
legends of marvelous cities full of gold and 
precious stones. As a result expeditions were 
sent out to conquer these rich places, but of 
course found nothing more remarkable than the 
great pueblos of the Southwest — marvelous com- 
munity villages, it is true, but having nothing of 
the wealth that the Spaniards expected. 

In the stories of great marches made by 
Coronado, 1540-42, and in those of de Soto, 
covering the same period, we may read how 
these European soldiers were amazed by the 
countless herds of buffalo, the great treeless 
plains, the enormous rivers, and we wonder over 
the almost unbelievable exploits of these early 
Spanish heroes. 

Few tales are more romantic, but since they 
came in armies and looked only for treasure, 
they attempted no lasting settlements, but moved 
from place to place, dwelling in the Indian vil- 
lages, or seeking to establish nothing more home- 
like than a trading-post. 



The Planting of Virginia 5 

The French and English fishermen also came 
to the coasts of America to catch codfish, but 
there was only one attempt to make a real colony 
of men and women before the settlement of 
Jamestown, in Virginia. This first attempt was 
when some French Huguenots or Protestants 
were sent to Florida, in 1562; but they were all 
slain by the Spaniards, not only because they 
were " heretics," and so enemies of Spain, but 
because they were in a land the Spaniards 
claimed as their own. Even the settlers of 
Jamestown were sent over to make money for 
the men who sent them, by finding gold-mines, 
looking for a way to Asia, or cutting rare woods. 

Virginia came to be settled because some Lon- 
don merchants thought they could make money 
by sending people to establish a settlement in 
America — a sort of trading post. 

The first Englishman to sail around the world 
had been Sir Francis Drake, and what was 
learned by him in his voyage made other English 
sailors eager to visit the New World. One of 
these was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who made 
three voyages to America, finally being wrecked 
on the third voyage homeward, his boat going to 
the bottom with all on board. 

Gilbert's half-brother was Walter Raleigh, and 



6 When America Was New 

to Raleigh Queen Elizabeth had given the right 
to colonize that great part of the New World, 
then known as •' Virginia." Raleigh sent out 
several expeditions to learn what sort of land and 
climate he had to deal with. The earliest of 
these expeditions brought back the report that 
the land was the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, 
and wholesome of all the world, and that the in- 
habitants, the Indians, were" void of all guile and 
treason and such as lived after the manner of the 
Golden Age." 

The next year after receiving this glowing re- 
port Raleigh sent seven ships and landed a party 
on Roanoke Island. These men soon quarreled 
with the Indians, were unable to get food, and 
were only too glad to go home with Sir Francis 
Drake, who happened to visit the island. 

Other similar attempts to settle the land also 
failed, and then came the time of the Armada, 
1588, when all England was too busy in defend- 
ing itself from the dreaded Spanish expedition to 
think of the new lands across the Atlantic. 
After the destruction of the great Spanish fleet, 
a few adventurous sailors made the voyage to 
New England, and by trading with the Indians, 
were able to load their ships with furs and valu- 
able woods, thus securing most profitable car- 



The Planting of Virginia 7 

goes. These men reported, as the others had 
done, that America was a beautiful land with a 
mild climate, and that there were many signs of 
gold. 

Meanwhile, Walter Raleigh, after the death of 
Queen Elizabeth, had fallen into disgrace with 
King James, who was trying in every way to 
gain the favor of Spain, and thought to please 
the Spanish by punishing this old enemy of 
theirs. Raleigh's rights in America were taken 
away from him, and the King gave the privilege 
of settling the new country to two companies of 
merchants, some of whom Hved about London 
and others near Plymouth. 

A play of the time named " Eastward Ho ! " 
spoke of the territory of Virginia as a land 
" where gold and silver are more plentiful than 
copper is with us." These companies were 
formed at this time, just as they are to-day, in 
the hope of making large profits by trading with 
the new countries, and one of the countries from 
which most was expected was America. People 
did not think it mattered greatly that the gold 
brought back by the Spaniards came from much 
further south than the lands belonging to the 
Virginia Company. 

Virginia was at first defined as all the country 



8 When America Was New 

from the thirty- fourth to the forty-fifth degree of 
north latitude, that is, from the Cape Fear River 
to the Bay of Fundy. The Virginia Company 
organized to settle this territory was divided into 
two branches according to the place where the 
members lived, London and Plymouth. To the 
Londoners King James gave the land between 
Cape Fear River and the Potomac ; to the Ply- 
mouth men, the land between the Hudson and 
the Bay of Fundy. The strip between — that is, 
between the Potomac and the Hudson — was left 
open as a prize to whichever should first settle it ; 
but it was ordered that in this strip no colony 
should be planted nearer to an earlier one than 
one hundred miles. 

The two branches of the Virginia Company 
each sent out an expedition. The London mer- 
chants sent out their expedition in midwinter^ 
and the colonists reached Virginia in the spring. 
These were the men who began at Jamestown. 
The Plymouth merchants sent their expedition 
out in the following summer — May, 1607; and so 
the ships reached America during a severe winter 
season, and landed far northward at the mouth of 
the Kennebec River in Maine. The men built a 
few huts, looked about for signs of gold, found 
the natives unfriendly, and after suffering greatly 




^ V. 



The Planting of Virginia 9 

from the cold, were glad to go home though they 
had done nothing. Their return was in 1608, 
and they said America was too cold to live 
in. 

The Jamestown expedition, though it was to 
have a hard time, was more fortunate in the season 
of sailing. The setting out was made a great occa- 
sion in London. The people of that city showed 
a patriotic interest in the three little ships about 
to sail to the possessions of England in America. 
The expedition meant that Spain was no longer 
to have her own way on the seas, and that the 
English were to share in the riches that came 
from America. So crowds came to see them off, 
and services were held in the churches where 
prayers for success were read. The poet Dray- 
ton wrote a poem to celebrate the great event ; 
and amid cheers, the firing of small cannon, and 
the waving of banners, the three little vessels 
bearing about a hundred settlers hauled up their 
anchors, and went down the Thames to begin the 
three or four months' voyage. 

The expedition included two experienced sea- 
captains, Newport and Gosnold, who had already 
made the voyage, and a number of adventurous 
men who were induced to join the expedition in 
the hope of becoming rich by trading with the 



lO When America Was New 

Indians, finding gold, or discovering a passage to 
India. 

Captain John Smith, though the best of these, 
may stand as a type of them. He had been 
fairly well schooled, had gone to the Lowlands to 
fight in an English regiment against Spain, from 
there had wandered into the East, and met with 
surprising adventures in battle against the Infidels, 
the Turks. Although still a young man, he was 
an old campaigner, skilful in arms, fearless, and 
used to rough work. 

After the army in which Smith was fighting 
against the Turks had met with a great defeat, he 
had been left wounded upon the battle-field and 
taken prisoner. Carried away by the Turks, he 
was sold into slavery, and bought by a Turkish 
officer who cultivated a large plantation. Upon 
this plantation Smith became a laborer, wearing 
a metal collar around his neck so that he might 
be chained up if necessary, like a dog. He was 
made to do all kinds of heavy work, but he never 
lost his pluck and pride. One day having been 
beaten by his master, Smith struck him down, 
took his horse, escaped from the farm, and after 
long wanderings succeeded in reaching a Euro- 
pean outpost. Here he was well cared for and 
helped on his way back to the Christian countries. 



The Planting of Virginia ii 

Such a training made him used to hardship and 
prepared him for the rough hfe in the New 
World, and capable of taking care of himself any- 
where. He was also a skilled sailor and an able 
leader, besides being a man of good character. 
His books, written in later years, tell us the story 
of the early days in Virginia, and as time goes 
on his accounts are thought more trustworthy. 

Another class of men were London citizens, 
men who had a little property of their own, who 
went on the expedition simply to better their 
circumstances. With these there went a number 
of worthless fellows who probably thought they 
could do no worse and might do better than at 
home, even though they were undertaking a 
perilous voyage to an unknown land to meet un- 
known dangers. They were tradesmen out of 
work, runaways from trouble at home, poor fel- 
lows glad to make a change for the sake of a 
change, and certainly not well suited to do rough 
work or to bear hardships. 

They started in December, 1606, but because 
of rough weather did not really get to sea until 
February. Then they took a roundabout way, 
probably for the purpose of refilling their water- 
casks and getting green vegetables — a most im- 
portant matter since the use of salt food and bis- 



12 When America Was New 

cuit alone was almost sure to bring on the ter- 
rible disease known as the scurvy, from which 
sailors in those days nearly always suffered on 
long voyages. There must have been some 
reason for thus lengthening their voyage since 
Captain Gosnold five years before had sailed 
straight across to Massachusetts and knew how 
much distance and time could thus be saved. 

But one trouble that led to others was the ab- 
sence of any well laid plans known to those on 
the ships. They had with them a sealed box, 
containing instructions, but this was not to be 
opened until they came to the American coast. 
So they did not know who were to be the officers 
of the colony, nor what the merchants at home 
wished them to do. 

During the four months' voyage, the rough 
weather, poor food, and hard work tried their 
tempers, and made them quarrelsome. They 
saw a meteor or " blazing star," and were not 
surprised that a big storm followed ; but at last 
without any great mishap anchored near the Is- 
land Dominica (San Domingo), where Indians 
came out in canoes and traded fruits and some 
cloths taken from a Spanish wreck for knives, 
beads, and copper jewelry. The Englishmen 
landed, but the natives ashore ran away from them. 



The Planting of Virginia 13 

Then they turned northward and after a ter- 
rible storm at last came in sight of the Virginia 
shore — which was bright with dogwood blossoms 
and redbud in bloom. The shore showed •' fair 
meadows and goodly tall trees," and they were 
especially delighted to see streams of fresh 
water, for they had been sixteen days under the 
hot sun, and (unless they had saved the rain 
water) had not refilled their water-casks. 

When the party landed, the list of them in- 
cluded but few useful tradesmen. There were 
four carpenters, one blacksmith, one tailor, a 
bricklayer and a mason. But besides these use- 
ful men, there were also a barber and a drummer, 
fifty-five " gentlemen " (that is, men who claimed 
gentility, and could probably do little useful 
work), four boys, and twelve put down as 
*' laborers." 

They made a mistake at the beginning by set- 
tling upon a bit of lowland near the river, but this 
was because the ships could be brought near the 
shore, and probably for safety from the Indians, 
who already had learned that the white men were 
to be feared. Several Indians had been kidnapped 
by former expeditions and carried abroad, and 
former settlers in this same region had so treated 
the Indians as to excite their distrust. 



14 When America Was New 

The colonists planted a number of vegetables, 
but showed how little they intended to rely 
upon farming for a living by spending much of 
their time in collecting glittering sand that they 
supposed was gold ore. They expected to re- 
ceive supplies from England. 

They built themselves rough houses, roofed 
with reeds or bark, and put up a few tents. The 
poorer men were content to live in holes dug in 
the ground. The sailors who brought them over, 
stayed for a time to gather the supposed " gold 
ore " and consumed the settlers' provisions un- 
til the whole party had to be put upon short 
rations of worm-eaten barley or wheat, each 
man receiving a pint a day. 

Drinking the river water, watching against 
Indian attacks, and the exposure, to which only 
a few of them were used, brought on fevers and 
other illnesses, so that at times not more than 
four or five men were well enough to carry 
arms. Half of the party died, and the rest were 
saved only by trading for provisions with the 
Indians. 

The salvation of the colony was due to Cap- 
tain John Smith. As a soldier he had learned 
the value of discipline, and he made rules that 
kept the men at work, threatening to banish from 



The Planting of Virginia 15 

the settlement those who were idle or did not 
obey orders. 

There were great differences between these 
men and the Pilgrims. These had suffered no 
wrongs to drive them from home, they agreed 
with the rulers in their opinions, and they went 
out with the good wishes of rich merchants who 
hoped to profit by their labors in the New 
World. But the directions given for managing 
a colony had been very poorly contrived. A 
set of rules drawn up in London was meant to 
govern all their affairs, and whenever any of the 
party thought that he was being wrongly treated 
by the men in authority he would appeal to these 
rules against the governors of the colony, and 
this made endless squabbles. 

Their officers were a president and a council. 
The first two presidents proved to be very poor 
managers, and affairs were in a bad way until 
Smith came into control. Smith was wise 
enough to try to find out about the country that 
lay near them and in a little boat they had built, 
he sailed up the rivers, making peace with the 
Indians on the shores and treating with them for 
food. 

The exploring of the country had been 
specially ordered by those who drew up the 



l6 When America Was New 

orders for the guidance of the colonists, because 
they hoped that in the course of examining the 
country the explorers might be fortunate enough 
to find the wished-for passage to India. 

Other settlers came until Smith was at the 
head of more than five hundred men. All the 
property was, so far, held in common, and all 
were expected to work for earnings to be put 
into the common store. There were very few 
women among them for the first few years, so 
the settlement, although it consisted of fifty or 
sixty houses and a church, really contained al- 
most no homes. It was much like a frontier 
fort, kept up for the purpose of trading and ex- 
ploring. 

From a letter of Captain John Smith's we 
learn that the products of the Jamestown Colony 
at first were pitch, tar, soap-ashes, timber, some 
iron ore, and other such products as they could 
obtain from the forests. 

From the same letter we learn that the settle- 
ment was fortified with a tall palisade and de- 
fended by twenty-four small cannon of different 
sizes. He also mentions a number of horses, 
five or six hundred swine, and " many more 
powltry." 

The colonists, according to Captain Smith, 



The Planting of Virginia 17 

seem to have been very well provisioned and 
supplied in 1609, when the Captain left them, 
which goes to show that their poverty within a 
few months afterward came from idleness or lack 
of good management. 

So long as the men worked only at the cutting 
of timber, the finding of gold, or gave their time 
to trading for animal pelts, the colony could not 
greatly prosper, for it could not be self-support- 
ing. The things with which they bought supplies 
from the Indians and traded for goods had to be 
sent from England. Neither could there be 
much made in this trade, since the cost and 
trouble of conveying goods across the ocean 
from and to England was sure to eat up the 
profits. 

All this led the merchants at home to Hsten to 
the grumbUng of mischief-makers against Smith, 
and he was deposed from his office. Soon after, 
having been injured by an explosion of gun- 
powder, he had to return to England. 

When Smith had left the colonists to them- 
selves everything went to quick ruin. Crops 
and work were neglected, their fort was allowed 
to fall into decay, there was no good manage- 
ment of their stores, and famine and disease des- 
troyed of five hundred inhabitants all but sixty. 



l8 When America Was New 

These few resolved to give up the colony, and 
two ships coming from England with but four- 
teen days' provisions, they went aboard and 
started down the river to the ocean. 

But hardly had they reached the ocean when 
they met a vessel bringing a new governor, Lord 
Delaware, and more settlers. The new governor, 
though not in all ways well fitted for his place, 
was yet a just and kindly man and brought back 
some prosperity to the abandoned town. After 
a few months this governor was taken ill, re- 
turned to England, and was succeeded by Sir 
Thomas Dale. Dale was a hard-hearted old 
soldier, cruel and miserly, but it happened that 
the colony needed a man who would rule them 
with a rod of iron. Although the men under 
him worked as convicts might work in a prison 
and were brutally abused, yet they learned the 
value of order and industry, and from the time of 
Dale's governorship the colony began to prosper. 

Other governors followed. Some of them 
were mild, and others were little better than 
thieves and cutthroats ; but since the colony was 
kept alive only by sending new men into it, from 
England, it mattered at first little how it was 
governed. 

The great benefit that came from Governor 



The Planting of Virginia 19 

Dale was a change in the way of giving to set- 
tlers rights in their farms. At first, as has been 
said, the land was owned in common by all and 
so there was nothing to be gained by any 
colonist for himself through industry. Fisher, 
in his " Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial 
Times," says : *' A man could not gain and have 
a home for himself by clearing and cultivating tlie 
land ; he had no family to inspire his exertions ; 
he lived only for himself and for the present, and 
therefore he lived from hand to mouth, from day 
to day." 

After Dale had divided the land among the 
settlers, affairs improved, but he had given the 
separate farms of three acres each to only a very 
few, and for the most part the colonists were left 
without any hope of bettering themselves by hard 
work. 

In the year before Plymouth was begun, 161 9, 
one of the English merchants, Sir Edwin Sandys, 
realized that there could be no success for James- 
town until wives were provided for the settlers ; 
and he sent over a shipload of young women, 
leaving each free to marry whom she chose, pro- 
vided the chosen husband should pay the ex- 
penses of her outfit and her journey over the 
seas. There were ninety of these young women, 



20 When America Was New 

and after they had been only a short time in the 
colony they found themselves so well pleased 
with their husbands that they wrote letters home 
which induced sixty more young women to fol- 
low their example. 

Although Sir Edwin Sandys was thus the 
saviour of the colony by his wise counsels, he 
never came to America. His nephew, George 
Sandys, noted as a poet and writer, made the 
voyage and acted as secretary to the colony. Of 
him we are told that he believed a route could be 
found to the Pacific by traveling overland, and 
that he was willing to risk his life in making the 
attempt. That he was something besides a poet 
is evident, since he was appointed to have es- 
pecial control over all schemes for raising " staple 
commodities," among which were to be pine- 
apples, plantains, and other fruits, and establish- 
ments for carrying on the silk industry. 

When once the owning of plots of land, and 
the coming of the women, had caused the 
colonists to look upon Jamestown as their real 
home, the Virginia settlement began to succeed. 
Within a very short time there were several 
thousand inhabitants in Jamestown and these later 
comers were men of a far higher class than made 
up the earlier expeditions. 



The Planting of Virginia 21 

There were in England at the time agents who 
made it their business to tell people what was 
needed to fit them for the new hfe in America. 
There is an old letter written to a lady whose son in- 
tended to go to Virginia, explaining what was nec- 
essary to provide in going to Jamestown. One 
of the main things seemed to be an ample supply 
of bedding, a feather bed, blankets, bolsters, pillows 
and so on, being especially named. The broker 
who writes this letter explains that whereas there 
is plenty of food in Virginia, it will be necessary 
for a newcomer to provide cloth and clothing. 
Others things mentioned are guns, groceries, and 
corn, " which is apt to be scarce," the broker says, 
" because the planters desire to give so much of 
their land up to cultivating tobacco." 

A most important matter in the story of the 
Jamestown Colony is the granting of what is 
known as the " Great Charter." Seeing how 
badly affairs were going in the colony, some of 
the wiser of the London merchants who were in- 
terested in making it a success thought it would 
be best to allow the colonists to govern them- 
selves, so far as that were possible, and they drew 
up this charter, a paper letting the colonists elect 
men to govern them. Those who drew it up, also 
took care to limit the power of the governor of 



22 When America Was New 

the colony, though they left him power enough 
to keep things in order. 

In the same charter the dividing of the land 
was carried further, a farm or plantation being 
given to every colonist who had arrived before 
the departure of Governor Dale. This helped to 
make the men hard workers, since an ambitious 
man felt that he could better himself by every 
hour of work on his own plantation. Besides, it 
began to be understood in England what sort of 
men made good colony builders. 

Edward Eggleston, in his " Beginners of a 
Nation," quotes from Bacon's essay on " Planta- 
tions " a sentence declaring that it is " a shameful 
and unblessed thing to take the scum of people 
and wicked, condemned men, to be the people 
with whom you plant." A little later Bacon de- 
clares : " The people wherewith you plant ought 
to be gardeners, plowmen, laborers, smiths, car- 
penters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few 
apothecaries, surgeons, cooks and bakers." In- 
deed, this essay of Francis Bacon contains in a few 
words advice and counsels that if they had been 
heeded would have been the salvation of the early 
colonists in Virginia. But since the essay was 
published in 1625, it very likely is simply a gen- 
eral statement of the lessons learned from the 



The Planting of Virginia 23 

experiences of the Virginia Colony during the 
dark and trying beginning. 

It will be seen that the very first prosperity in 
Virginia came from giving large tracts of land to 
the earlier colonists. Naturally enough, these 
men found that their farms or plantations became 
more and more valuable when later comers of 
better character arrived from England. Once 
the farms were in the hands of men who had the 
right to sell them, it was not very many years 
before this land passed into the ownership of rich 
men from the old country who saw that much 
money was to be made by raising tobacco and 
sending it home. The first to plant tobacco was 
John Rolfe, the man who married Pocahontas ; 
and the crop succeeded so well, and sold for 
such high prices that every one planted tobacco- 
plants. 

Nearly all the tobacco that was used in Eng- 
land had been imported from the West Indies, 
but after it was found that the soil of Virginia 
would yield large crops of tobacco of good 
quahty, and yield them with little work, the price 
of land in the colony became very high. Every 
possible spot where tobacco-plants could be set 
was made use of. At times even the streets were 
planted at the sides with thriving crops of to- 



24 When America Was New 

bacco. Tobacco even took the place of money, 
which was very scarce. 

Men who owned fair-sized plantations were 
made rich by the valuable crop. As soon as 
each crop was sold, they could use the money to 
get other land and so plant a larger plantation. 
There was no lack of men to work on the planta- 
tions, for many poor people had come from 
England in the hope of doing better in Virginia, 
and these men often made a written agreement 
to work for a number of years to pay for the ex- 
pense of bringing them across the ocean. The 
paper such men signed was known as an " inden- 
ture," and the workers so bound were called " in- 
dentured servants." Besides these, there were 
men who had been sent out from England as a 
punishment. These came to the colony without 
any means of making a living except by hiring 
themselves out to the planters. 

The men who found so much profit in work- 
ing the plantations were glad to buy land and 
make their plantations larger, and so the size of 
the great tracts owned by planters kept on in- 
creasing ; and those who had smaller plantations 
could not afford to sell their crops at so low a 
price, and thus were driven out of the market. 
The men in England who had the right to grant 



The Planting of Virginia 25 

lands in Virginia also favored the making of 
large estates, and offered the best terms to rich 
men who would undertake to carry on these large 
plantations. In fact, the conditions in the 
Southern colonies from the very beginning were 
very much like those in the middle ages, when 
one lord owned vast tracts of land which he 
rented to a number of tenants. These tenants 
paid him a rental for the use of the land, either 
in money or in work, or by giving part of the 
crops, and they also were required to be ready at 
his call to come prepared with arms when the 
Indians threatened the settlers. 

Some of the proprietors in England believed 
that it would be wise to bring about the making 
of smaller farms, and in Carohna, Maryland, and 
Georgia, during colonial times, very favorable 
terms of settlement were offered to men who 
would take plots no larger than about a hundred 
acres. But these plans were not a success. The 
soil, the chmate, and the ways of trade, suited 
best the working of large farms, and throughout 
the southern region the smaller farms failed, for 
the most part, while the owners of great planta- 
tions became rich and kept on enlarging their 
possessions. 

In this way it happened that before long the 



26 When America Was New 

people of the Virginia colony began to divide up 
into two great classes, namely, the land-owners 
and their families, and the people who had no 
land and must work for a living. Once started, 
this state of things increased and the land went 
more and more into the hands of a few rich 
owners, and it became very difficult for new- 
comers to lay up enough of their earnings to buy 
a place among the land- owners, for land near the 
settlements was high in price. 

Because the work of the great farms was car- 
ried on almost entirely by bonded servants, and 
later by slaves, who were looked after by agents, 
the people who owned these farms had much 
leisure, and being fond of company, there was 
much entertaining among the residents in the big 
houses. Visitors to the Virginia Colony were 
often surprised to see how much wealth and 
luxury there were in the life of the planters. 
There were, of course, few chances for investing 
money, and so more was spent in house-fitting, 
in furnishing, in silverware, and in dress, than in 
a community given to manufacturing or great 
business enterprises. 

The first introduction of negro slavery into the 
Virginia Colony was in August, 1619, when a 
Dutch ship came by chance and brought about 



The Planting of Virginia 27 

twenty negroes and put them up for sale. But 
for the next fifty years the negro laborers were 
very few, most of the work being done by white 
servants brought from England. Of course, in 
those days slavery was practiced nearly every- 
where, and only a very few deeply thinking or 
eccentric men believed slavery to be wrong. 
Except for the opinions of a few individuals, 
there was no opposition to slavery until the 
Quakers declared it to be wrong and began to 
work against it toward the end of the seven- 
teenth century, that is, between 1670 and 1700. 
Slave labor seemed well adapted to the planta- 
tions of the South, but even there it was not until 
a later period that slaves became numerous in 
America. 

Yet before slavery had been introduced there 
was a sharp and clear division in Virginia between 
the higher and lower classes — the owners of 
plantations, and the workers who served them. 
As at home in England, so in the New World, 
the aristocratic rich kept to themselves, and the 
poorer classes were not recognized as equals. The 
way of life in the Virginia settlements favored 
this division, and there was not the same mingling 
that was brought about in more northern colonies, 
where the whole community was likely to be 



28 When America Was New 

made up of men taking care of small farms, and 
each working for himself and his family. 

The difference between the northern and the 
southern settlements in America, therefore, at 
this time, depended upon the amount of money 
that could be made by tilling the soil and upon 
the hands into which this money went. Virginia 
became used to a state of things where a few rich 
men held the right to the land and controlled the 
government. The New Englander became used 
to a state of things where men were very much 
on an equality, and even the possession of a little 
more money than one's neighbors brought only a 
trifling advantage over them. 



CHAPTER II 
THE FIRST NEW ENGLANDERS 

THE first true permanent settlers of our 
land, the first families who came to 
make it their home, were the " Pil- 
grims," the English families who came to 
America from Holland. These men brought 
with them all their possessions. Their wives and 
children came too, and they meant to stay and 
make homes in the new land. They were simple 
folk, not rich nor clever, nor very learned. They 
came to America for good reasons. In the first 
place they wanted churches of their own, because 
they did not believe in the regular English church, 
and they were not allowed to stay away from its 
services, or to hold meetings of their own for 
worship. They made up their minds to go to 
Holland where others of their kind had gone be- 
fore them, and after one or two failures they es- 
caped the King's officers, stole secretly away, 
sailed to Amsterdam, and there found homes in 
the poorer parts of the city, making a living at 
various trades and callings. 
29 



30 When America Was New 

But though the Pilgrims made a Hving and 
were kindly treated, they did not do well, and 
there were many religious disputes and quarrels 
among the other English people who had come 
there before them. So the Pilgrims removed to 
Leyden, and there found peace, but little pros- 
perity. Life was hard, and when they saw their 
young people growing up to speak Dutch, to 
learn Dutch ways, to spend part of Sundays in 
sports and games, the leading men decided to 
settle in a new land, where they could remain 
English and could live and beHeve as they 
thought right. 

Where to go was the next question. The 
Dutch offered to settle them in Zealand or in New 
Amsterdam — the trading post on Manhattan Is- 
land. Sir Walter Raleigh had written a book 
about South America, and some thought it would 
be wise to settle there. Others wished to go to 
Virginia, but to this it was objected by others 
that the English Church was established there by 
law. 

At last they decided to ask for a place in the 
Virginia territory, with the King's permission to 
have their own church ; and two men were sent 
to England for this purpose. The King con- 
sented after much urging, and a hard bargain was 







MAP 

ENGLISH GEANTS 
1606-1732. 



GULF OF MEXIC 



The First New Englanders 31 

made with the men who had charge of the Vir- 
ginia Companies. 

Then began the question who should go to 
prepare the homes for the rest, and the youngest 
and strongest volunteered. Two ships were 
bought, the property of all was put together, 
and they made ready for the voyage. Going by 
boat from Leyden to Delftshaven, they here bade 
good-bye to their friends, went aboard the little 
Speedwell, and as those who came to say farewell 
fell on their knees while the minister John Robin- 
son gave them his blessing, the ship left the pier, 
and they sailed on their way to England where 
they were to meet the Mayflower— d. larger ves- 
sel. She had sailed from London to Southamp- 
ton to await them. 

As they left the shore, the sailors fired three 
Httle cannon ; then those on shore waved their 
hands, as long as the ship was in sight, and the 
first home-makers had begun their voyage to- 
ward the unknown future in a new land. 

Arriving at Southampton, they found the 
Mayflower awaiting them — a queer tub-like 
vessel, high at prow and stern. But they must 
wait for a favorable wind and settled weather, 
and meanwhile they were " kindly entertained and 
courteously used by divers friends there dwelling." 



32 



When America Was New 



Among the things that caused the Pilgrims to 
come to America besides the wish to find re- 
hgious freedom, we must give plenty of weight 
to their expectation of doing better for them- 
selves and their children. Their lives in Holland 
had been hard, they could earn little, and could 
see no future for themselves and their families. 
In giving the reasons why the Pilgrims left Hol- 
land and sought new homes, their Governor 
William Bradford puts first the hope of an easier 
living than they had found in Holland, which, 
as he tells us, ♦' they sought and found by experi- 
ence to be such as few in comparison would 
come to them, and fewer still would bide it out." 

Other of the newcomers across the Atlantic 
were driven from England because there was 
little chance of finding work at home. During 
Queen Elizabeth's time England became well 
known in Europe as the country from which the 
best wool was to be had. English wool sold at 
high prices and gave good profits to sheep owners, 
better profits than were made by farming. P'or 
this reason, many of those who owned land 
changed from raising grain and vegetables to 
running sheep farms. Many a field that had 
long been plowed was now turned into grazing 
meadows for flocks of sheep, and since a few 



The First New Englanders 33 

men could look after large flocks of sheep, 
many farm laborers were turned away to make 
room for a few shepherds. In the country 
districts there were " hard times " and much dis- 
tress. 

Of course where many seek to be hired, men 
will work for low wages, and this makes the 
laboring-classes poor. There were in England 
at this time a large number of men who had 
been soldiers fighting in Holland, and these, 
when war ceased, also had to seek work and thus 
lessened wages. The laws against beggars were 
cruelly strict, and as " beggars " were classed all 
who had no regular employment. 

In reading the life of Captain John Smith we 
see how, after long campaigns abroad, he re- 
turned to England without any property or way 
of supporting himself, though he was an officer, 
a man of good family, and some accomplish- 
ments. The private soldier, as soon as peace 
was declared, became little better than a vaga- 
bond. Myles Standish, also a captain like Smith, 
had served in the Lowlands and returned home, 
having nothing wherewith to make his way in 
the world except his sword. 

Of course in England there were not many 
kinds of work to which unskilled men could 



34 When America Was New 

turn their hands. For the trades, boys were 
trained by long years of apprenticeship. The 
demand for unskilled laborers on the farms was 
more than filled, and since times were hard there 
was almost no outdoor work done that employed 
laborers. 

Little of the land was then used for farming 
even in the best times, only about one-quarter 
of what is so used to-day ; the rest had not been 
cleared of trees, was boggy, or remained as open 
fields called •' commons," belonging to the towns 
and villages generally. On these commons a 
few animals were pastured, but it was no one's 
business to see that such lands were looked after. 
Landowners were constantly trying to get the 
right to enclose these commons without paying 
the people for them. The men driven by lack 
of work into the towns did not find ready em- 
ployment there. The trades were in the hands 
of guilds or societies, who were jealous of ad- 
mitting new members. The entire right to sell 
many common articles had been granted to 
noblemen, and trade in these could not be 
carried on without the payment of heavy taxes 
to these owners of rights granted from the 
Crown. Edwin Goadby, in a carefully written 
little book on " The England of Shakespeare " 



The First New Englanders 35 

says, in general, that industry was much de- 
pressed and towns were decaying. 

Nor did England have to provide only for her 
own people. Long religious wars in Europe 
had sent many emigrants across the sea into 
England, and though these men were to be- 
come in time a great benefit, at first they only 
made it harder for the native English to find 

work. 

Of course, when to the English merchant there 
came two young fellows asking for work, and 
one of them, though a foreigner, was able to 
show great skill and knowledge which he had 
learned abroad where tradesmen did, at that 
time, better work than the English, this foreigner 
was likely to be hired and the Englishman turned 
away. Nor could the poor fellow go from factory 
to factory in the hope of finding a place. There 
were, then, few kinds of work from which to 
choose. Instead of great shoe factories, as to- 
day, they had but the village cobbler. Cloth 
was not turned out by great mills, but woven on 
cottage looms. People usually raised on their 
grounds what they ate, and all sorts of handi- 
work were carried on rather in the home than in 
great shops. 

Many employments that now give work to 



36 When America Was New 

thousands, then either did not exist or were in 
their infancy. Coal was yet a new thing, and 
there were mines worked in only a few places. 
Besides the monopolies granted by the Crown, 
there was a constant meddling by royal orders, 
licenses and grants, that prevented merchants 
from carrying on their business profitably. All 
these things, by making it hard for merchants to 
prosper, kept them from employing workers, and 
consequently for a great part of the English peo- 
ple life was a long struggle to make both ends 
meet. 

When such was the condition of affairs at 
home, we can see how tempting to Englishmen 
were the prospects abroad. The plays of the 
time, which in a way took the place of our news- 
papers, were constantly bringing before crowded 
audiences the great wealth to be had by simply 
crossing the ocean. In the play, " Eastward 
Ho ! " of which Ben Jonson was one of the 
authors, a character is made to say, speaking of 
the natives of America : " They have in their 
houses scoops, buckets and divers other vessels of 
massive silver," and in a " Dialogue against the 
Fever Pestilence," one of the speakers declares 
" that their pots, pans, and other vessels are clean 
gold garnished with diamonds." In fact, some of 



The First New Englanders 37 

the old stories once told of the riches of Oriental 
lands were now made over to fit the new western 
country. Many of the common folk, having 
heard of the vast sums of gold the Spanish ships 
brought home from the West Indies, found it 
easy to beUeve that in America gold and silver 
were even commoner than such base metals as 
copper in England. They believed that upon 
landing they would come at "once upon tribes of 
ignorant Indians ready to give them in exchange 
for cheap goods such as cloths, knives, beads, or 
for ordinary farm implements, handfuls of gold 
and precious stones. They believed also that 
this new land was full of wonders and contained 
delicious fruits, rich mines, and possibly springs 
and plants of magical properties. 

Even the common people, who could seldom 
read, heard much talk of the New World and its 
wonders. They knew of the capture by English 
sea-captains of great Spanish treasure-ships, 
♦' galleons," loaded with gold, silver and precious 
stones, from the Indies. They heard the wonder- 
tales of travelers, of the rich empires over the 
seas. 

And among the better classes who could read, 
books of travel, such as " Hakluyt's Voyages," 
were very popular, and were filled with the do- 



38 When America Was New 

ings of adventurous men, — Spanish, Portuguese, 
English, or Dutch, — and with the accounts of 
barbarous peoples who had wealth in profusion. 

All this was new to the English, first because 
books were only then becoming plenty and 
cheap, and second because the English nation 
had just learned that her ships and sailors were a 
match for those of any in the world. They no 
longer feared to put out into the open sea and to 
sail to the furthermost parts of the earth. 

There was always an additional reason to join 
expeditions to America in the fact that it was 
still believed to be merely an Asiatic coast. 
Even the best informed English geographers 
of the time believed fully that there would 
be discovered a strait, either southward or 
northward, leading to the Pacific Ocean, 
and thus giving quick access to the markets 
of the East, from which came so many riches 
and luxuries. There were different ideas at 
different times concerning just where this pas- 
sage was to be looked for. At one time it was 
confidently thought to be somewhere in north 
latitude forty, or through the middle of the State 
of New Jersey. When this idea had to be given 
up, the supposed opening through the land that 
had stopped Columbus was shifted, and certain 



The First New Englanders 39 

navigators believed it was to be found some- 
where in the northwest. 

Still later, there was some hope of finding a 
great fresh-water lake, or inland sea, that should 
open into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 
For more than a hundred years later there still 
remained hope of finding, not far from the eastern 
coast, a big river flowing westward down which 
ships might be sent to the Pacific. The very- 
latest trace of the idea of getting through the 
American continent did not disappear until 
about 1765. 

Of course, if such a passage had existed it 
would have been well worth finding, as it would 
make a short road to the East and would enrich 
those merchants who could send cargoes out to 
exchange for Oriental products. 

The demand of the time for rich spices was 
boundless. There was little skill in cookery, and 
men's appetites tired of the continual roasts, 
stews, and broils. Pepper, cinnamon, and other 
such condiments came from Asia, were high- 
priced, and there was not nearly enough of them 
to satisfy the public demand. 

Besides this commercial reason, there was a 
strong flavor of romance in the idea of seeing for 
one's self the new regions concerning which 



40 When America Was New 

such marvelous stories had been told by- 
travelers whose tales were little more than 
romances strung upon a slender thread of fact. 
Even had the stories not been told without much 
care to separate the truth from mere fancy and 
romance, there was plenty of excitement to be 
found in the tfue narratives of such great deeds 
as the conquest of Mexico and of Peru. 

It was a time when war was the rule and peace 
the exception among even the more advanced 
nations, and many of the religious men of the 
time were anything but scrupulous in advocating 
the conversion of the heathen after the method 
of Mahomet, at the edge of the sword. 

The Indians were still curiosities in which 
Enghshmen took unbounded interest. There is 
an often quoted reference in Shakespeare's, " The 
Tempest " to the eagerness of the Londoners to 
gaze upon the embalmed body of a dead Indian. 

All these motives were among the causes that 
led men to enroll themselves in the various ex- 
peditions that set forth for the American con- 
tinent. 

With so much to drive them from home, and 
so much to invite them to cross the sea, it is only 
surprising that the ships going to the New World 
were not crowded full of adventurous folk. The 



The First New Englanders 41 

more intelligent, who were able to read the stories 
of men who had gone to Virginia, must have 
seen that dangers were great and the prospects 
for comfort and prosperity in the new country- 
were anything but bright. 

There was Sir Walter Raleigh's first expedi- 
tion. He did not accompany it but put it under 
the command of Amadas and Barlowe. This 
was a mere matter of exploration, and resulted in 
a glowing account of the blessings of the land 
which they described as fruitful, wholesome, in- 
habited by a mild and gentle people from whom 
only kindness was to be expected. Then fol- 
lowed, also under Raleigh's patronage, a fleet of 
seven ships under Sir Richard Grenville, the 
doughty sea warrior whose fight single-handed 
against the whole Spanish fleet has given Tenny- 
son the subject for his poem, " The Ballad of the 
Revenge." 

Though about a hundred men were landed on 
Roanoke Island, no settlement could be formed 
because of the quarrels with the Indians and 
failure of food supplies. Grenville going out a 
second time to help the colony, found it aban- 
doned, but left a few men to hold Roanoke Is- 
land for the Queen. Raleigh then got together a 
number of merchants to fit out a larger expedi- 



42 When America Was New 

tion. In 1587 a number of settlers was landed 
on Roanoke Island, and here the first white child 
was born of English parents — Virginia Dare. 
Three years later, when Virginia's grandfather, 
John White, governor of the colony, came back 
from a voyage to England, he found only ruins in 
the place of settlement and the word " Croatan " 
— probably the name of an Indian town — cut on 
a tree. Nothing has ever been learned as to the 
fate of these settlers. It did not seem as if it was 
meant there should be an English colony planted. 

But the failures made by these different par- 
ties sent to Virginia were explained away. It 
was said that the men themselves misbehaved ; 
that they were badly governed ,» or that they had 
had accidents ; and people still believed it pos- 
sible to avoid all such mistakes and to return 
from America within a few months bringing a 
shipload of treasure. 

It was afterward seen by those who read 
wisely the stories sent home by the Virginia 
colonists, that in order to make a successful set- 
tlement parties must be formed of men used to 
working with their hands and able to make for 
themselves homes, to defend themselves against 
the hostile natives, and to trade skilfully with the 
friendly Indians. 



The First New Englanders 43 

From the published accounts of these various 
expeditions the leaders of the Mayflower party 
had gained some knowledge of the land to which 
they were going, since the leaders tried to learn 
all they could about the New World, and there 
was one man then in England better fitted than 
any one else to lend them aid. This was Captain 
John Smith of the Jamestown Colony, who, after 
he had been injured by a gunpowder explosion in 
one of his explorations, had come back to England 
and had made several trading and fishing voyages 
to the New England coast, and given his time to 
writing about the life at Jamestown. Smith 
wrote to the Pilgrims offering his services and 
advice. 

Smith held at this time the position, or rather 
title, of Admiral of New England, and thus had 
an official interest also in the settlement of the 
coast. John Smith had written perhaps offering 
to guide them, and to take charge of the settlers ; 
but since they already had his map of Virginia, 
they believed it wise economy to trust to them- 
selves rather than to engage Smith, concerning 
whom there had been more than one unpleasant 
story told by his enemies in Virginia. The reply 
to his offer declared Smith's " books and maps 
were much better cheap to teach them than 



44 »When America Was New 

himself." This Smith has told us in his own 
writing, and he adds, shrewdly, " many others 
have pursued the like good husbandry " (that 
is, safe, or economical conduct) " that have paid 
dearly in trying their self-willed conclusions." 

As to the people on board the Mayfiower, they 
were mainly of two sorts, those who came of 
the poorer classes, and those who belonged to the 
richer families but had been turned out into the 
world to make their living. Of the former sort 
was John Alden, a cooper, probably an ordinary 
tradesman such as we see around us everywhere, 
a strong, well-built young man who had grown up 
at the work of putting together casks and barrels, 
handy with tools, fairly intelligent, but not at all 
well educated. His dress was plain and simple, 
probably well worn and of common material, for 
only the nobles and the rich were permitted in 
those days to wear gay costumes, lace and jewels. 

Of the other sort were such men as Captain 
Myles Standish, who seems, though it is some- 
what uncertain, to have been the younger son of 
a good family, but to have gone out into the 
world at an early age as a soldier, depending only 
on himself for a living. Bradford who became 
the governor of Plymouth for many years also be- 
longed to the latter class, being a well educated 



The First New Englanders 45 

man who had cast in his lot with the Pilgrims be- 
cause of his religious views. 

Alden and Standish were entirely used to 
coarse fare and to hard living. Even the poorer 
classes to-day would consider it a great hardship 
to put up with the regular way of hfe that seemed 
comfort to a soldier of Elizabethan times or to 
such a tradesman as Alden. Their beds were 
poor, usually merely of straw ticks, at best ; their 
food, though plentiful, was coarse and poorly 
prepared ; and their clothing was so seldom re- 
newed that garments were often handed down 
from father to son as heirlooms. 

The most intimate friend of Bradford was 
William Brewster. He was a graduate of Cam- 
bridge college, and had afterward been a clerk to 
Elizabeth's Secretary of State, and with him had 
traveled in Holland. The rest of the Mayflower 
passengers were English people neither rich nor 
very poor, such as lived on small farms and made 
a scanty living out of them by hard work. Of 
course they were not educated, but they could 
use tools, were able to manage the ordinary 
crops, knew about the care of farm animals, and 
if they did not dress richly, yet had good cloth- 
ing, fared well, and had the respect of their 
neighbors. Such they had been in England; 



46 When America Was New 

and, besides, they had learned when being per- 
secuted to be close friends, and were trained by 
their long years among the Dutch to act together 
for the good of the community. They went 
aboard their vessels without intention of ever re- 
turning to England, and thus were the first who 
really meant to become " Americans." 

A sea voyage of that time meant weeks and 
months of living upon most unsavory food, for 
the stores consisted of grain, salt fish, salt meat, 
and a few sorts of dried fruit most imperfectly 
prepared. Even in those times also there was 
sufficient greed and fraud in trade to make it 
likely that the dealers from whom they bought 
their provisions would so pack them as to cover 
spoiled or inferior grains by a layer of better 
quality, or would sell them salted meat packed in 
casks so that it could not easily be examined be- 
fore sailing. It was sometimes found, after a 
ship was out on the high seas, that she had been 
loaded with spoiled provisions. In the case of 
ships going to a new country there was little 
chance that a dishonest dealer would ever be 
brought to justice. There was no one to take 
up the complaints of poor sailors or passengers, 
and if, as sometimes happened, the captain of the 
ship was a party to the fraud, any growling about 



The First New Englanders 47 

the food would be hkely to bring upon the 
grumbler a beating, at the very least. 

In order to keep warm upon the wintry 
Atlantic the men had to rely upon, at most, one 
or two fires built upon hearths of clay or sand 
set upon the ship's decks. The men were all 
bundled in ill-fitting clothing, and had no means 
of thoroughly protecting themselves from spray, 
heavy sea-mist, and rain. 

The small size of the vessels caused them to be 
terribly tossed during rough weather, and, except 
for the most hardened, seasickness was inevitable. 
They had no good means of keeping drinking 
water pure and wholesome, and the management 
of the sails requiring constant attention gave the 
sailors and passengers Httle relief from wearing 
toil. Another thing not to be forgotten was the 
superstitious fear of the sea and its monsters, for 
it was an age of credulity, and, among sailors 
especially, wonderful legends were eagerly told 
and credulously received. The sea was an un- 
known world believed to be full of strange 
dangers, and any sea- voyage was an adventure 
in itself. 

The book from which we learn about the voy- 
age of the Mayflower was written by Governor 
William Bradford, and in reading his pages we 



48 When America Was New- 

have a sense of reality in his descriptions of how 
*' it began to snow and rain," and how ♦* about 
the middle of the afternoon on the 8th of De- 
cember the wind increased and the sea became 
rough, the rudder broke, and the ship had to be 
steered by two men with oars." At another 
time the mast breaks in three pieces, the sail 
falling overboard. Every day had its anxiety or 
trouble, and the voyage was one long hardship, 
especially to the women and children cooped up 
below the decks in rough weather. 

The most serious accident on board the May- 
flower v^d,^ the sudden cracking of a great timber 
that supported the deck. Of course, if this 
should give way they knew the deck would fall 
in and then the seas coming aboard would soon 
fill and swamp the vessel, for it would be no 
more than a big open boat. Luckily they found 
that some one had put aboard a great screw, a 
sort of ♦• jack," hke that used for raising wagons 
to repair them. This was put below the timber 
and used to force it back into place, making the 
vessel safe once more. 

The Pilgrims were many of them very sea- 
sick, and were not kindly treated by the sailors, 
one of whom cursed them and said that he 
" hoped to cast half of them overboard before 



The First New Englanders 49 

they came to their journey's end." But, strangely 
enough, this young man himself was smitten 
with disease and was the first of the ship's com- 
pany to die and be buried at sea ; which Brad- 
ford seemed to regard as a judgment of heaven 
upon him for his wickedness. 

These were the ordinary dangers awaiting 
every one who put to sea ; but, in addition, there 
were other causes of dread that made the people 
of the time rightfully regard every long sea 
voyage as a great peril. The sea was a sort of 
" no man's land " where there was no law except 
the law of the strongest. Once out of the land- 
locked seas, the mariner depended upon the 
swiftness of his vessel, his clever seamanship, or 
his little cannon for safety. In reading the ad- 
ventures of sailors in those days, we find the fear 
of pirates ever present. And the pirates of the 
time were not found under the black flag only ; 
there seemed nearly always to be enough enmity 
between nations to permit of seizing a desirable 
cargo if it belonged to a foreign power. And, if 
a vessel were missing, who could say that it had 
not gone down in a storm ? The ocean of those 
old times was not the thronged highway of our 
day, nor were the war vessels — which acted as 
sea- policemen — the irresistible monsters we know. 



50 When America Was New 

Where to-day the sight of a sail on the horizon 
is a matter told with joy by one passenger to an- 
other, in those days the first thought that came 
to the minds of the seafarers was the danger that 
the strange ship would run up the black flag and, 
without other warning, begin a fierce battle that 
might end in the capture of their ship and the 
walking of the plank by every soul on board. 
Every ship went armed, and a sharp lookout was 
kept so that in good time the vessel might take 
to her heels if a suspicious stranger was met. 

Thus, in reading the life of Captain John Smith 
of Virginia, we find that about 161 5 he was in 
command of a small vessel making a voyage with 
a crew of thirty men to New England. When 
well out on the ocean his ship was attacked by 
pirates, with whom Smith held a parley. He 
discovered that the men who attacked him had 
been, many of them, his own companions during 
his campaigns against the Turks. They offered 
to join Smith's fishing or colonizing expedition, 
but he refused them and sailed away, only to 
fall in once more with two pirate ships from 
which he escaped by superior sailing. A little 
later. Smith's vessel met a fleet of four French 
men-of-war, supposed to be acting as '• police " 
against the pirates and as warships against the 



The First New Englanders 51 

Spaniards and Portuguese. When Smith went 
aboard the Admiral's ship and showed his papers 
he was detained, and meanwhile his ship was 
robbed by the crews of the men-of-war — who 
thus treated him worse than the professed pirates 
had done. 

This little instance of a single voyage will show 
that it was not a matter of small risk in those 
days to sail upon the high seas. 

The May flower' s voyage had lasted about nine 
weeks when land was sighted and recognized to 
be Cape Cod, a point much further north than 
they had expected to reach. They had tried to 
turn southward but were unable to pass the 
dangerous shoals and roaring breakers before the 
wind failed. It was then decided to go back to 
the harbor and there cast anchor. 

The most pressing need was for fresh water 
and fire-wood, and fifteen or sixteen men waded 
through the shoals and were gone all day explor- 
ing. On their return they reported the land like 
Holland, but with better soil, and said that the 
woods were free from undergrowth. They had 
found no inhabitants. 

The Mayflower lay at anchor in some part 
of the harbor until the middle of April, 1 62 1, 
and meanwhile the men of the party waded to 



52 When America Was New 

and fro through the shallows putting up some 
rough houses for shelter, making handles for the 
tools they had brought from England or Holland, 
cutting timbers to make a boat, and in other 
ways preparing for the landing. During this 
period they had one sUght skirmish with the 
Indians, explored the shores of the bay, and 
selected the site for their settlement. 

On January 31st they had so far finished their 
Common House, or town hall, as to be able to 
hold services in it, and on this day began their 
real home-making in the wilderness. They had 
built a few dwellings, the Common House, and a 
shed for storing provisions before leaving the 
vessel, and by lot they assigned plots of land 
along a street leading up from the shore to each 
household. All working together, they cut down 
trees, built log houses, thatched them with sea 
grass, made chimneys out of stones plastered 
with clay, and filled the window and door open- 
ings with roughly-fashioned shutters and doors. 
They were still living, for the most part, upon 
grain and salt meat brought from home, and 
they now began to shoot geese, to catch a (ew 
fish, and were lucky enough to find a dead deer 
the Indians had abandoned. 

Their hardships were greatly increased by the 




1 "II I'M Hull I il'f 1 HI 



The First New Englanders 53 

severe sickness of nearly the whole party, at one 
time there being only seven men able to stand 
upon their feet. These men did all the work of 
the settlement, cooking, nursing, washing, build- 
ing, and guarding the rest. During the first 
year about half of all died, and out of eight- 
een wives but four lived through this terrible 
winter. 

With the coming of spring they were able to do 
some planting, and in this they were much aided 
by friendly Indians. The Pilgrims had taken up 
land left unclaimed because a plague had swept 
off all the Indian inhabitants, and thus they could 
make their settlement without interfering with 
any Indian rights. 

By the last of March all the Pilgrims had left 
the Mayflozver for good, and this was the begin- 
ning of their Hfe in the New World. 

Besides helping the settlers to raise corn by 
showing them how the soil could be enriched with 
fish caught in the harbor, the Indians also taught 
them how to dig clams upon the shore and to 
catch eels in the brook near the town. The In- 
dians were to prove for the most part very help- 
ful to the colonists. Besides supplying them 
with corn from their own stores, the Indians 
taught them how to make moccasins, and also 



54 When America Was New- 

how to prepare buckskin so that it would be soft 
and fit for clothing. 

All of the Pilgrims ahke worked in the fields. 
It had not been necessary for them to make clear- 
ings, since that had all been done by these In- 
dians, who were well acquainted with the art of 
raising corn. It was not until later that any 
trouble arose with the Indians, and this was soon 
settled by the bravery of Miles Standish, who, 
with a little band of men armed with their old- 
fashioned guns, went fearlessly to visit the differ- 
ent tribes and by a mixture of boldness and fair 
treatment succeeded in keeping the peace with 
them. 

Before long there were in the settlement eleven 
houses, four of them being for the use of the 
public. Their first crops had been successful, and 
they had learned to trade with the Indians for 
furs. It had been arranged that out of the prod- 
ucts of the colony whatever things were salable 
in England should be collected and sent back 
when the Mayflower returned. There was then a 
great deal of travel across the Atlantic, for the 
fishing banks north of New England had proved 
most valuable, and a fleet or two came over every 
year for the fishing season. The voyage across 
the Atlantic was therefore familiar to many 



The First New Englanders 55 

sailors, and the Pilgrims had made arrangements 
to repay what money had been raised by the 
merchants to send them out by the products of 
the new land. To carry back such products and 
bring them provisions, a bargain had been made 
with the seafaring men who were used to the 
voyage. 

Thus they were not entirely cut off from 
their friends at home, in spite of the fact that the 
voyage was a long and dangerous one. In fact, 
a second ship, the Fortiuie, came to the colony 
about a year after the Mayflower left them, and 
brought new colonists. By her a valuable cargo 
was sent home. They could therefore send furs, 
wood, and other products to England in payment 
of their debts to the merchants who had supplied 
them with funds for the enterprise, and they had 
not only raised enough corn to provide for the 
settlement, but had found time also to cut timber 
and to go upon hunting expeditions that prove 
there was plenty of game and fish to be had not 
far from the settlement. 

Their chief need was for horses, cattle and 
sheep. From the account written by Governor 
Bradford, we learn that they lived upon fish and 
fowl which were in great abundance; that they 
had cod, lobsters, eels, mussels, clams, oysters^ 



56 When America Was New 

besides grapes, berries, plums, and other fruits and 
salads. For meat they seem to have had little 
but venison. 

Thus, within not many months after their 
landing, the Pilgrim settlers were provided with 
comfortable houses, had abundance of wood to 
keep them warm in winter, and lived probably 
better than they had ever Hved before. 

But all this plenty lasted only during a few 
months after the fall. By the following spring 
the absence of game and the lack of proper 
means for fishing had brought scarcity to the 
colony, and they were compelled to go upon 
half rations while they sent one of their number 
northward to procure bread from the fishing fleets 
that were accustomed to cross the Atlantic every 
year to the Banks of Newfoundland. From this 
fleet the messenger got enough ship bread, prob- 
ably hard biscuit, to keep them alive in spite of 
the fact that several new parties of emigrants had 
arrived from England. 

Although there were times of plenty and times 
of famine to follow, and although there were oc- 
casional troubles with the Indians, the Pilgrim 
settlement on the whole prospered, growing in 
strength and in numbers and soon becoming self- 
supporting; for nearly all the members of the 



The First New Englanders 57 

colony were men who had learned to work with 
their hands and were quick to take hints from 
their Indian neighbors. There never was in this 
first New England colony a state of things so bad 
as the terrible periods of suffering undergone by 
the settlers of Jamestown. 

The Pilgrims, as has been said, were the first 
who came to America resolved to make their 
homes there for good. It was this intention that 
helped them to make a successful colony, but 
during their earliest years they came near to ruin 
because they tried, as other settlers had done, to 
hold their land in common and to have every 
settler work for all the rest. Two years' trial of 
this plan showed that it was not the best, and 
William Bradford, their governor, decided to 
divide the land on which they settled into plots, 
giving to each household a plot larger or smaller 
according to its numbers, so every household 
had to depend upon itself and the work of its own 
members. They were thus compelled to work for 
their food or to go hungry. 

After this new plan was adopted, Bradford 
writes : " In general, want or suffering hath 
not been among them since to this day." And 
this was written a number of years afterward. 

Thus, both in Virginia and in New England, 



58 When America Was New 

the plan of working their land in common had 
failed, and a wise governor in each region had 
found it necessary to give separate farms to the 
settlers. 



CHAPTER III 
THE DIFFERENT SETTLERS 

IN drawing contrasting pictures of the first 
settlers in the North and the first settlers at 
the South, we shall have to begin with the 
land itself. The Virginia plantations lay mainly 
along the low banks of rivers, in a soft climate, 
where the soil was fertile, whereas in the North 
the land was rocky, not easy to cultivate, and the 
shores were abrupt, rough, and uninviting. 

The people themselves, after they had been in 
the New World long enough to have their char- 
acters changed by the sort of life they led, 
differed as much as the regions in which they 
had settled. The Virginian felt an affection for 
his old home, was willing to be dependent upon 
England, looked upon the old country as his 
best customer, and considered himself as one who 
meant, some day, to visit his native land, even 
if he did not remain there. 

The New Englander, on the contrary, looked 
upon himself as one who had been driven or had 
59 



6o When America Was New- 

gone by choice into a foreign land to carry on 
his affairs in his own way. 

But although this great difference between 
North and South existed, yet there were differ- 
ences between the settlers even of the same part 
of the land, and this difference in New England 
was very great between the Pilgrim and the 
Puritan. 

We have read how the New England settle- 
ment began by the coming of the Pilgrims to 
Plymouth ; and the success they had met with 
brought about an entirely different sort of settle- 
ment, though in the same region. This was the 
Boston Colony, that really became the beginning 
of Massachusetts and at a later time swallowed 
up the Plymouth settlement : for the ways of the 
two became more alike as time went on, and the 
Puritan settlers soon became much greater in 
numbers than the Pilgrims, who did not greatly 
increase. 

The coming of the Puritans was thought out 
most carefully. Everything that seemed likely 
to make the colony a success was done before 
they started. They had good leaders, some of 
the ablest men of the time ; they came with a 
clear knowledge of the country and of the con- 
ditions to be met with ; and they had plenty of 



The Different Settlers 6i 

money, so that they could buy all that they 
needed in clearing the ground, planting their 
farms, and building their homes. 

The Puritans were men who did not mean to 
leave the Church of England, saying themselves 
that they would not " overset the house, but 
wanted to sweep it." They did not like prayers 
read from books, or ministers' robes, and ob- 
jected to many of the ceremonies that were 
thought to be popish. Although they did not 
altogether agree among themselves, in general 
they hoped to simplify the Church service, but 
did not at first go so far as the Pilgrims had 
done in making each congregation a self-ruled 
body. 

They represented a very strong party in 
England, and they secured from the King a 
charter and a grant of land north of where the 
Pilgrims had made their colony. It is thought 
that the reason why the King gave them the 
right to make a colony was that he hoped to 
keep in check the growing Dutch Colony on 
Manhattan Island, and thus to secure a larger 
part of the American coast for England. 

Very wisely, the colonists of the Massachusetts 
Company arranged that the governing of their 
affairs should be carried on in the New World, 



62 When America Was New 

and they thus from the beginning saved them- 
selves from interference by men who did not 
know the conditions in America. 

Among their company were men of good 
family, with property, and well educated, and 
their purpose seems to have been to found in 
America a settlement that would show the whole 
world how good was the system of religion and 
government in which they believed. The colony, 
once begun, increased so rapidly that in the 
ten years from 1630 to 1640 it had grown to 
number fifteen thousand. At the end of this 
time there came a halt in its growth. Because 
of the unwillingness of King Charles to let 
Parhament govern England, disputes began, and 
two great parties were formed in England, one 
supporting the King, the other the Parliament. 
In the latter party were the Puritans and all 
those who sympathized with them. These men, 
in spite of small differences of opinion, were all 
agreed in opposing the power of the King and 
fought against him in the war that followed. 
When the King's party, or Cavaliers, were de- 
feated, the prominent Puritans came into power 
and all interference with men of their own beHef 
ceased. 

There was thus no reason for them to flee to 



The Different Settlers 63 

America, and it was not until the coming of the 
Stuarts again to the throne in 1660, that there 
was any large number of emigrants to the Puritan 
colonies. 

As the colony at Plymouth had in these later 
years become fairly prosperous, it was very 
natural that the English Puritans, looking about 
for a means of escape from the royalists, should 
decide upon making for themselves a new colony 
in America, as the Pilgrims had done about forty 
years before. 

Thomas Dudley, afterward governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, says in telling how Massachusetts Bay 
Colony began, that in the year 1627 "some 
friends in Lincolnshire fell into a discussion 
about New England and the planting of the 
gospel there." These friends wrote to other 
Puritans, and decided to send one of their num- 
ber to look into the conditions in America. 

This was John Endicott, who went over and 
began the " plantation," as Dudley calls it, at 
Salem. These pioneers reported that all went 
well with them, and in 1629 some ships with 
about three hundred people were sent over, well 
provided with cows, horses and goats. When 
this second party also sent home good reports, 
John Winthrop became the leader of still larger 



64 When America Was New 

expeditions, seventeen ships in all coming by 
1630. 

It was found, however, that some of the 
colonists had suffered during the winter weather, 
and so it was decided on the part of the leaders 
to look for another place than Salem. A num- 
ber of good town sites were selected, and settle- 
ments began at Charlestown, Boston, Medford, 
and several other places. But the Puritans did 
not approve of this separation, and after full dis- 
cussion they agreed to get together so as to 
make a single strong town, and later most of the 
settlers gathered around Boston Bay. 

This account is given by Governor Dudley in 
a letter written in March, 1 631, to the Countess 
of Lincoln ; so we see that in four years the 
Puritan Colony was well started. 

Dudley's letter concludes by advising those 
who wish to better themselves not to come to 
America if they are in good circumstances in 
England ; but he promises those who wish to 
come " for spiritual ends " they will find wood 
for building and to burn, ground for planting, 
seas and rivers to fish in, pure air to breathe, 
good water to drink " until wine or beer can be 
made," and suflficient food, though no luxuries. 

The men in charge of the Massachusetts 



I 4e 




...._ ,.;.!); 



A PILGRIM SOLDIER. ARMOR AND WEAPONS. 



The Different Settlers 65 

Colony were very generous in setting apart plots 
of ground for settlers. These plots were not 
very large because there was not a great deal of 
fertile soil ; besides, settlers preferred to live near 
together. Towns usually were laid out along a 
single street, each house having a garden at its 
back. The land for building, pasturing, and the 
forest land, was usually held in common, since 
it was expensive to build fences, and not easy to 
protect great tracts from Indian attacks. The 
same plan was adopted in other New England 
settlements. 

The differences between Puritan and Pilgrim 
were naturally great, since they were of such dif- 
ferent origin. To begin with, their views of the 
Church were not at all alike. The Pilgrim 
ought, rightly, to be called an " Independent," 
for his chief idea in church government was the 
right of every congregation to fix for itself the 
way of worship, to choose for itself the minister, 
and to decide for itself what men should be re- 
ceived or should be excluded from membership. 
This did not always mean that they were against 
the regular English Church, but only that they 
did not believe in the power of that Church to 
decide for them matters of conscience, matters 
of right and wrong. 



66 When America Was New 

It was quite different with the Puritans. 
They had never refused to yield to the laws or 
rules of the English Church. They had done no 
more than urge certain reforms in their churches, 
customs, and services. In coming to America, 
they expected at first to keep up their relation 
with the Church at home, and were not in sym- 
pathy with the desire of the Pilgrims to be free 
from home control or interference. 

If we bear in mind this difference in views we 
shall not be surprised to know that the Puritans 
were much more intolerant than the Pilgrims. 
The Pilgrims could not well insist upon the right 
to think for themselves without granting the 
same right to others. The Puritans had thought 
themselves bound to follow the rules laid down 
for them at home, and so saw no reason why 
they should give place in their settlements to 
those who desire to upturn the old laws and 
customs in England. 

Thus it was not at all an uncommon thing in 
the early days of New England for those who 
were accused of free-thinking or heresy, by the 
Puritans, to be driven out of their settlements 
and to take refuge with the Pilgrims at New 
Plymouth. One example of such a refugee was 
Roger Williams, who began the settlement that 



The Different Settlers 67 

became Rhode Island ; and again and again we 
may read of the Quakers being driven out of 
such communities as Boston, while being allowed 
to live peaceably among the Pilgrim families of 
Plymouth. 

Naturally this now and then made trouble be- 
tween these two sorts of New Englanders, and 
there still exist letters that passed between the 
governors of Boston and those of New Plymouth 
in regard to the free-thinkers, who, having been 
driven into the Pilgrim town, were harbored 
there, although the Boston men would have been 
glad to see them driven out. As years went on, 
however, the Pilgrim and the Puritan became 
more and more ahke. Living under the same 
conditions and thinking much the same thoughts, 
the Puritan came to be more of an Independent, 
and the Pilgrim was willing to live in the New 
Country under many of the conditions against 
which he had fought in the old. 

This was due also to the events that were tak- 
ing place in England in the years following the 
first settlement of New England, for it was the 
time of the great uprising against the Stuarts. 
People were divided into two great parties — those 
who supported the claims of the King, and those 
who were in favor of the Parliament. So di- 



68 When America Was New 

vided by one big question, there was less atten- 
tion paid to the smaller matters that had for- 
merly marked off the little sects and denomina- 
tions. 

In reading history we find that we must be 
told mainly about the great questions of any 
time. We are told how the colonists held cer- 
tain views about the throne, about rehgion, or 
about the rights of the people, but these were not 
the things which mainly took up the attention of 
our forefathers after they had come to live in the 
wilderness. 

In the very early days, the men and women 
lived just as people must live who are, as it were, 
*' camping out " in a new country. The things 
that called for their attention were the providing 
of shelter, food and fuel, or the protecting of 
themselves from the natives or from wild beasts. 
But as more and more people come to the rude 
settlements made up of a few log cabins, these 
rougher villages give way to larger and larger 
towns in the midst of many acres of cultivated 
fields. Then the questions that need attention are 
changed, the colonists find that they must pro- 
vide laws to govern themselves, laws to punish 
wrong-doers, and rules by which to carry on the 
works of peace or the pursuit of warfare. 



The Different Settlers 69 

The natural way, as we know from the history 
of nearly all peoples of our race, is to decide 
such matters by vote of the men of the town or 
settlement. The reason for this is that in order 
to make people obey rules, these rules must be 
such as can be enforced by the power of the men 
forming the community that makes them. 

The first instance of this making of rules for 
the New World occurred on board the May- 
flower before the landing of her passengers. 
When she left England it was with permission to 
settle in certain parts of the land belonging to the 
Virginia Company ; but on reaching the coast 
the passengers discovered that they were outside 
the limits of the Virginia Company's lands, and 
therefore if they landed would be in a new coun- 
try really out of the government of any power 
but their own. There was some talk of this sort 
among the passengers, and therefore the leading 
men called a meeting in the cabin of the vessel, 
and then drew up a set of rules, making an 
authority to which all must yield, and caused 
these rules to be signed by all the men-passen- 
gers who Avere able to be present at the meeting. 

The same sort of government continued in 
their town of Plymouth for many years, and 
although when settlers came in larger numbers 



yo When America Was New 

they Hved under laws laid down in England for 
their guidance, yet even in these later days there 
were a large number of minor matters that had 
to be regulated by the colonists themselves. 

All the little laws of the colony — the questions 
of roadways, of pastures, of life in the towns, of 
what are known as *• minor morals," that is to 
say, good behavior — all these things had to be 
regulated by laws the colonists made for them- 
selves, and the method of making these laws, was 
to hold a joint meeting, usually in a town-hall or 
a church, and then to vote what should be made 
the rule to govern all that part of the colony 
whose ruHng men thus met together. This was 
known as a " Town Meeting." 

The only successful settlements were made by 
men of serious purpose who were willing to live 
under fixed laws. In the histories of America we 
read of other settlements attempted by companies 
of men who had no purpose except to gain 
money by trading with the Indians ; but none of 
these lasted, either because of quarrels with the 
natives, or because when they sold liquor and gun- 
powder to the Indians, the better class of colonists 
combined to drive them away. There was, for 
example, such a settlement begun at Weymouth 
in Massachusetts. But as soon as the men at 



The Different Settlers 71 

Plymouth and at Boston saw that the Weymouth 
party would not behave themselves, they sent an 
armed guard under the command of Captain 
Miles Standish to capture the mischief-makers 
and to destroy their cabins. This was done, and 
rightly done, for the Indians could not be allowed 
to have fire-arms nor to drink liquor without the 
greatest danger to the white men. 

In such a case as this, every one sees that men 
must take the law into their own hands. They 
have a right to protect themselves, and to keep 
others from doing things that threaten their 
lives ; no body of men is bound to leave others 
alone when others do things that threaten to en- 
danger the very existence of their neighbors. 

But besides the government of the towns by 
the colonists themselves, there were certain 
greater questions which were considered impor- 
tant enough to be under the control of the 
authorities at home, in England. From the very 
beginning this was borne in mind by the King 
and by the companies that granted the use of the 
land to the home-seekers. 

Sometimes this interference of the rulers at 
home was a bad thing, as an instance from 
the experience of the Jamestown settlers will 
show. 



72 When America Was New 

Before the Virginia colonists set out there was 
delivered to them a locked box in which was an 
elaborate set of rules, drawn up by the King and 
his ministers, telling just how the officers of the 
colony were to be appointed, who these officers 
were to be, what things they might decide for 
themselves, and what they must keep for the de- 
cision of greater officers at home. 

It is not quite clear what good was to come 
from keeping the members of the expedition in 
the dark about the contents of this box until they 
landed. It had one very curious result. On the 
way over, John Smith had tried to give more 
advice than his comrades hked. No doubt he 
knew more about living on ship board than any 
of the rest, but they did not enjoy his meddling. 
So great became the ill-feeling against him that 
before the end of the voyage he was imprisoned 
on serious charges and was still a prisoner when 
they landed. 

On the opening of the King's box it was 
found that Smith was named among the officers 
to govern the colony, which at once made 
trouble. The puzzle what to do with him was at 
last settled by Smith himself. They refused to 
allow him to take his part in the government, 
and he demanded a trial and so managed it 



The Different Settlers 73 

that he was acquitted and restored to his 
office. 

Among the directions contained in the box 
were a number that kept the colonists from doing 
what was best for themselves, but directed them 
to seek for a passage through the continent, to find 
gold mines, to make various treaties with the 
natives, and to seek certain kinds of merchandise 
to be sent home. If the party had been rightly 
selected, some of these things could have been 
done ; but as it was, the directions were simply 
foolish, and were the cause of constant quarrels 
between the colonists and the merchants who had 
sent them out. 

As time went on, many of the absurd directions 
were changed, and the colonists were allowed to 
raise such crops as they needed, to make homes 
for themselves, to lay out plantations, and to deal 
with the Indians as they saw fit. 

In the case of the New Englanders, the Pil- 
grims suffered from the same stupidity. The 
merchants who had lent them money to pay the 
expenses of their journey were constantly inter- 
fering with the affairs of the new colony, and it 
was only when by the utmost economy and in- 
dustry the Pilgrims had secured money enough 
to pay off their debts, and were free to do what 



74 When America Was New 

they found best that they began to progress 
quickly in their work of making homes in the 
New World. 

The general idea of that time was that colonies 
should be managed by their mother country in 
such way as to make money for those who had 
sent out the settlers. This idea had come down 
through the ages from the Roman and Greek 
times, and was never questioned save by a few 
men who thought for themselves and who could 
see that in the long run it was wise to let a 
colony make its own prosperity and acquire 
strength before any return to the mother country 
was to be expected. 

The whole history of the American colonies 
helps us to understand how bad the old policy 
was. In every community, both North and 
South, there were really two sets of officers. One 
set represented the mother country, or, rather, 
represented the King and his ministers, the other 
came from the people themselves, understood 
their wants and desires, and was eager to secure 
for them freedom from interference. The first 
set of rulers was made up of the royal gov- 
ernors and the officers appointed by them. 
They were not often selected because of their 
fitness for the place, but rather through the favor 



The Different Settlers 75 

of the King, or as a reward rendered for services 
elsewhere than in the colony. These men came 
across the sea carrying the royal commission 
giving them great power over the colonists, and 
making them responsible only to the Crown. 

They brought to the colony an element that was 
entirely foreign to its life. They were men 
trained in the Court at home, or in the army, used 
to the rights of aristocrats, and without an un- 
derstanding of the equality that came from work- 
ing side by side in the new country. It is easy 
to see that only the very wisest men could hope 
to carry out the wishes of the King, could secure 
profits for the merchants at home, and at the same 
time deal justly and fairly by the colonists them- 
selves. 

Another great source of dispute was the ques- 
tion of paying these governors. It was natural 
that the King and his ministers should argue that 
the governors and their military forces were sent 
out for the good of the colonists themselves, and 
that therefore from the colonists themselves should 
come the money necessary to pay them. On the 
other hand, it was quite as natural that the colo- 
nists should fail to see just what good they gained 
from the presence of these King's officers. 
While they would hardly deny that some govern- 



76 When America Was New 

ment was necessary, they could not help seeing 
that the colonies had really to govern themselves. 

Even when there was trouble with the Indians, 
or there were quarrels between the colonies of 
different nations, the colonists found that they 
had to do most of the fighting for themselves. 
It is true that when the colonies first began, and 
were weak in numbers and in resources, they 
were very ready to call upon the mother-country 
to send soldiers for protection when it was 
needed ; but as the colonies grew in numbers and 
in self-reliance they ceased to need this help or to 
find it worth having when it was sent or to be a 
fair return for the heavy taxes they were com- 
pelled to pay to provide for the support of troops 
sent across the ocean. 

The kind of warfare made necessary in fight- 
ing the Indians was quite different from that to 
which the English regulars had been trained at 
home. Although the regular forces made a 
brave showing in marching through the little 
towns, and too often looked down upon the 
colonial troops whom they despised as " militia," 
yet a very different story was told when the 
militia and the regulars had marched into the 
wilderness and fought with the Red Men. The 
Indians would not, of course, meet the regulars 



The Different Settlers 77 

upon a chosen battle-field or fight according to 
civilized rules ; they fought each man for himself 
in a series of skirmishes, laid ambushes, and at- 
tacked without warning, would hang around the 
outskirts of a marching force, picking off strag- 
glers whenever they could, and, in short, fought 
as savages fight — in the same manner that a 
hunter hunts game. 

To all this the colonists were accustomed, and 
they learned the savage tricks from the Red Men 
themselves, becoming even more skilful in wood- 
craft, and were generally better marksmen, be- 
sides having better weapons. 

What is true of warfare is likewise true of the 
daily life of the colonists. Everything had to be 
done in new ways because it was done under new 
conditions. There was no time for the " red 
tape," that is, for the forms and ceremonies, to 
which the dwellers in old settled countries were 
accustomed. The ways of trying cases in the 
law courts, the methods of doing business by 
merchants, the manners and customs of the 
colonists toward one another, were all such as the 
conditions in the new country made necessary. 
Consequently when the royal governors came 
over, bringing with them the old customs and 
the forms to which they were used in the home 



78 When America Was New 

country, there was bound to be trouble and disa- 
greement, misunderstanding and quarreling. And 
when these misunderstandings brought about 
serious differences between the colonists and the 
governors, making it necessary to refer the mat- 
ter in dispute to the King and his ministers at 
home, it is not strange that the colonists should 
fail to win the sympathy of those who had sent 
out the royal governors and who felt bound to 
support them if possible. 

In the earlier days the differences between 
these royal governors and the colonists made 
trouble, but the most serious quarrels arose in the 
days preceding the Revolution, and will be told 
when we look into the causes that led Americans 
to throw off the English rule. 



CHAPTER IV 
MARYLANDERS AND DUTCH 

ORIGINALLY, Virginia meant all the 
English territory in America, but 
gradually, as more was learned about 
the size of the continent, the territory of Vir- 
ginia was cut down and other colonies were 
carved out of it. One of these colonies so carved 
out was Maryland, a grant of which was made, as 
already said, to two noblemen, favorites of King 
Charles I. 

The first settlers reached Maryland in 1634. 
The party was made up of twenty gentlemen and 
three hundred laboring men. Although Lord 
Baltimore was a Roman Catholic, and the settle- 
ment was meant especially for men of that faith, 
yet from the beginning it was decided that there 
should be no persecution in the new province. 
The expedition included the families and servants 
of the settlers, and was accompanied by Jesuit 
missionaries. They bought the land from the 
Indians, and as in nearly every case where the 
natives were treated with justice, there was no 
trouble between the settlers and the Indians. 
79 



8o When America Was New 

Since these colonists went to work from the 
beginning with the intention of making a per- 
manent settlement, there is a complete lack of the 
hardships and disasters that were met with by the 
first settlers in Virginia. The Marylanders built 
for themselves houses, planted orchards and 
gardens, kept on friendly terms with the Indians, 
and even lived among them, and enjoyed peace 
and quiet, except for some disputes with a few 
of the Virginia Colony, who were unwilHng to 
admit the rights of the new colonists. 

Later on, another similar attempt was made to 
question the Calverts' authority, and this time 
the claimant, a piratical individual named Ingle, 
succeeded for a time not only in defying Gov- 
ernor Calvert, but even put him to flight and des- 
troyed part of the settlement. But, later, Calvert 
returned and drove the mischief-maker out of the 
province. In fact, the only trouble that ever 
arose in the early days of the Maryland Colony 
was caused by white men who attempted to dis- 
pute the right of the Calverts to their own prov- 
ince. Another of these attempts was made 
during the rule of Cromwell in England, and was 
supported by him, but when Charles II came to 
the throne the Calverts were once more put into 
power. 



Marylanders and Dutch 8l 

There were a few questions as to rights of 
taxation, and so on, between the proprietors and 
the law-making bodies of the colonies themselves, 
but, in general, the whole line of Calverts con- 
ducted the affairs of the province with wisdom 
and prosperity. 

When William of Orange came to the throne 
there was a renewal of the effort on the part of 
the Puritan element in the province to take the 
government from the Calverts, but the proprietor- 
ship remained in the family until the American 
Revolution ended the proprietary rule over Mary- 
land. 

It will thus be seen that the history of the 
Maryland Colony is in certain respects different 
from any other. 

Woodrow Wilson points out in his " History 
of the American People " that Englishmen of all 
sorts and creeds began to desire new homes in 
America as soon as the earliest settlers had shown 
that it was possible to make self-supporting settle- 
ments. 

With the coming of the Stuart Kings to the 
Enghsh throne again, an uneasiness among the 
English people had made them long for the 
liberty of life in the new country. The Puritans 
expected no favors from the King, and the 



82 When America Was New 

Roman Catholics also feared that they would 
not be long free from persecution. 

It was to this feehng that the settlement of 
Maryland was due. Lord Baltimore, from having 
been a favorite of King James was now in dis- 
favor with the English people because he had 
tried to bring about the marriage of the English 
Prince Charles to a Spanish princess, and this 
match had been given up. Lord Baltimore had 
been interested in the early companies that had 
sent colonists to America, and had even secured 
for himself a tract of land on Newfoundland 
and begun a colony there. The hard winter, 
causing great suffering to the settlers, and the 
nearness of the French, who had shown themselves 
enemies, made Lord Baltimore eager to found a 
colony further southward, and so he had decided 
to ask King Charles, who was then on the 
English throne, for Maryland. 

These lands had once belonged to Virginia, 
but had been taken back by the King. The 
Virginians tried to keep the King from granting 
the charter, but after the death of the first Lord 
Baltimore the grant was made to his son, 
Cecilius Calvert, who determined to carry out 
his father's plan. 

It was in 1633 that Calvert sent out his colo- 



Marylanders and Dutch 83 

nists, many of whom were Romanists, and there 
were, as we said, some Jesuit priests. In order to 
keep the good-will of the people of England 
and at the same time to make a home for Ro- 
manists, he made his colony free to people of all 
religious faiths. 

At first the Virginians were not friendly to 
these newcomers, who had settled upon the 
bank of a little stream flowing into the Potomac. 
But the Marylanders, in spite of the attempts of 
some Virginians to give them trouble, founded a 
thriving settlement, kept peace with the Indians 
from whom they had fairly bought their village 
site, and by industry and prudence so prospered 
that not only did they never suffer from famine, 
but during their first year raised enough grain to 
send a shipload to New England to be traded for 
fish. 

Wilson says that Maryland "turned out an- 
other Virginia in its ways of life and govern- 
ment," although the method of government 
differed in some ways, because of Lord Balti- 
more's having great powers, almost as great as if 
he were king in the new land. 

The chief difference between the two colonies 
was the freedom granted to Roman Catholics to 
worship in their own way, in Maryland, while 



84 When America Was New 

the Virginians were expected to belong to the 
Church of England. The plantation life, the 
commerce upon the rivers, and the nature of the 
crops, did not differ in the two communities. 
But Maryland was the first of the colonies which 
was established on a large territory that had been 
given to one man as if it were his own private es- 
tate. This was due to the favor of the King, 
who wished the Calverts to enjoy all the power 
he could grant them. 

As far back as the days of William the Con- 
queror, it had been the custom to give to certain 
nobles great power because they lived on lands 
so far from the king that it would not be pos- 
sible to refer things to him for his judgment, and 
yet these lands, being on the frontiers of the 
kingdom, and near its enemies were the very 
places where quick action and great powers in 
their rulers were most needed. One of the last 
nobles to hold such powers was the Bishop of 
Durham, who was on the Scottish border and so 
held a castle most important while Scotch and 
English were at war ; and to the Calverts were 
given the same powers that these bishops had 
over Durham. So the Lords Baltimore were 
really the rulers of Maryland. 

Although the Hudson River was discovered 



Marylanders and Dutch 85 

by and bore the name of an EngHsh captain, he 
was in the employ of a Dutch trading-company, 
the West India Company, whose charter gave it 
the right to estabhsh trading-posts and to govern 
them in the new territories for the benefit of the 
sturdy, thrifty, and hardy Netherlanders. 

The httle home country that the Dutch had 
conquered from the sea by building dykes or 
dams to keep the ocean out had been forced by 
its position to breed a race of sailors. At first 
subject to Spain, the Dutch became Protestants 
and revolted against their Catholic rulers. In a 
bloody struggle lasting eighty years they won 
their liberty and became an independent nation, 
strong on land, invincible on the ocean, for in 
fighting against Spain for religious liberty, the 
Dutchmen had made for themselves a navy that 
was long the best in the world. Few of the 
nations of the time seemed better fitted to make 
and keep colonies. Their territory in America 
was part of that which England considered as be- 
longing to the Virginia Company. But the 
Dutch did not at first care much for that. 

They found out, through a few adventurous 
men, that there was money to be made by trad- 
ing with the Indians for furs, and they also hoped 
to raise wheat in large quantities. At first these 



86 When America Was New 

men built only a rude trading-post far up the 
Hudson River, near the Indian hunting grounds, 
and also a group of huts where the city of New 
York now stands. By the time that the Plym- 
outh colony was well started, the Dutch had only 
about two hundred colonists in four or five trad- 
ing-posts on the Hudson, in the Jerseys, and 
upon Long Island. 

The long wars against Spain had made the 
English and the Dutch good friends, since both 
were Protestants and had been fighting Catholic 
Spain ; many English merchants were in the 
Dutch seaports, many English students studied 
in the Dutch colleges, and during the Spanish 
wars the Dutch armies were full of volunteers 
from England. Besides these English in the low 
countries, there were those who, Hke the Pil- 
grims, had gone there for the sake of religious 
freedom. Dutchmen also had been driven into 
England from those parts of the Netherlands 
conquered from time to time by the Spanish 
armies. In the English towns along the coast 
were clever Dutch workmen who taught the 
English their trades and, because they were for- 
eigners, the Dutch were not interfered with in 
their religious beliefs. Altogether, the relations 
of the Dutch and the English were for many 








MAP III 



FRENCH, EXGLISH, DUTCHr 
SWEDISH & SPANISH 

U? ^V- J^S^;;:?^- provinces 

[^French ^^English ^j Dutch 
^' V ■" ^^^ □s^t'erf^•s;^ ^ Spanish 

■>"''" ClX^ L L POATES EN3R'S CO , N.Y. 



Marylanders and Dutch 87 

years very friendly, but all this was changed 
when England sought to make her colonies in 
America strong and to get possession of the new 
land. 

At first there had been no intention of making 
them more than posts for trade, and the growth 
of the Dutch colonies was very slow and so 
brought little profit to the merchants in the 
Netherlands, Consequently the company at 
home made up their minds to invite settlers, and 
offered great tracts of land to those who would 
settle them, giving the owners of these tracts 
powers to rule in the new country with little in- 
terference. A number of rich merchants were 
attracted by this offer and tried to establish large 
estates, but very few of them succeeded. The 
same great powers that attracted the rich land- 
owners kept farmers from putting themselves un- 
der the authority of these men, since they could 
live in a freer way at home ; and besides times 
were good in Holland, and there was little to 
tempt them to America. 

So the Dutch Company changed the first plan 
for increasing the colonies, and afterward made 
offers to give smaller tracts to the settlers them- 
selves, and to pay the passage of those settlers 
who would go out to America. They also no 



88 When America Was New 

longer required that these should be Dutchmen, 
but invited the men of all nations to come to 
the Dutch Colonies with equal chances to trade. 
This brought great numbers of small settlers, es- 
pecially those who sought for complete liberty of 
conscience. The Dutch had always been Hberal 
in this respect at home, and they were wise 
enough to give the same freedom of thought in 
the New World. 

The colony, however, despite this growth, was 
not wisely governed by the men sent over to 
take charge. These men interfered too much in 
the affairs of the colonists, were haughty and 
domineering, showed bad management in their 
treatment of the Indians, and at length brought 
about such a state of things that there was no 
safety from the natives except near the larger 
settlements. 

Altogether, the Dutch colonies could not be 
said to be very successful, although there were 
advantages in their position that ought, properly 
used, to have made them masters of all America. 
One of these was their nearness to the Indian 
mint, or place for making money. The Indians 
used for currency a part of the oyster or clam- 
shells that were found in large quantities on Long 
Island. From this with great labor were ground 



Marylanders and Dutch 89 

out small beads, white and purple, which were 
drilled with a flint awl and strung so as to make 
necklaces and belts. This was the well-known 
" wampum." It was valued, at first, for ornament 
by all the Indian tribes, and afterward became 
recognized as a sign of power and wealth, and 
then as currency, a currency that must always be 
somewhat rare and therefore valuable, since it 
was made only by great labor. The Dutch, 
being near the place where this wampum was 
made, could obtain it more cheaply than other 
colonists, and it was a very easy and compact 
way to carry value when they went into the 
woods upon trading expeditions. They also 
made it for themselves, and having better tools 
made it more easily than the Indians. 

A second great advantage was the wonderfully 
fine harbor of New York, from which rivers led 
into the interior, making trade with the Indians 
cheap and easy, by means of small boats. Young 
men were sent out to trade, and made long 
journeys for the merchants. 

A reason given for the failure of the Dutch to 
prosper was the very thriftiness and prudence of 
the Dutch character. It was harder to tempt 
Dutchmen to go across the sea and to face the 
perils and uncertainties of life in the new land. 



9© When America Was New 

Another reason was the lack of belief in the 
colony by the governors at home. Sydney 
Fisher ^ says that these men " had allowed it to 
become the plundering-ground for a greedy, sel- 
fish corporation monopoly, and its rapacious 
governors. They had not the force of character 
and energy to settle and rule it properly." After 
more than forty years, though the Dutch lived in 
well-built towns, having strong houses made of 
brick brought from Holland, the population was 
less than ten thousand and could barely maintain 
itself at a time when the New Englanders, in a 
much worse country, numbered nearly five times 
as many, and were thriving. 

The final end of the Dutch control was brought 
about largely because the New Englanders came 
to believe (or pretended to believe) that there was 
a plot between the Dutch and the Indians to 
massacre the English settlers. It was demanded 
by the American colonists that the English King 
should take possession on the ground that the 
Dutch Colony was really within the limits of the 
territory granted to the Virginia Colony, and an 
English fleet was sent to demand the surrender 
of the Dutch. It was, of course, impossible for 

1 " Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times." 



Marylanders and Dutch gi 

the outnumbered Dutch to resist, and except for 
a brief period when the Dutch again took control, 
the New Netherlands Colony passed into English 
hands, little to the regret even of most of the 
Dutch settlers themselves, who believed that the 
English would govern them better than their own 
people had done. Some, however, returned to 
Holland. 

After twenty years of English rule, the colony 
had increased so that it was nearly doubled, and 
the trade of New York became of much impor- 
tance. 

The fur-trade of America was, as we have said, 
one of the earliest that brought great profits. 
The first to take advantage of it were the French. 
They alone were able to travel in the interior of 
the continent, being friendly with the Indians 
there. They had set up little trading-posts in the 
forests, along the rivers, and by the best known 
Indian trails. The natives were excellent hunt- 
ers and trappers, animals of all sorts abounded, 
and the trade was most profitable, both to the 
Indians and to the white men, each parting 
with what cost them little and receiving in ex- 
change something more valuable to them. The 
Indians were glad to receive for their furs the 
knives, axes, beads, blankets, powder, guns, 



92 When America Was New 

and liquor they could not make for them- 
selves. 

It was the hope of sharing in this trade that 
had brought the Dutch over to the Hudson 
River, whose course lay through great forests 
that made rich hunting-grounds. Katharine 
Coman ^ declares that at one time an " annual 
harvest " of 66,000 skins was sent over to the 
furriers of Europe from the American Colonies. 

We can, to-day, hardly understand how great 
was the use of furs a few hundred years ago. 
Methods of heating were very bad, and houses 
were cold, clothing was dear, and the wearing of 
furs was almost a necessity. Wherever there 
were colonists in the New World the trade in 
furs became to them a most important source of 
wealth, and hardy men made long journeys 
wherever the Indians were not too hostile, to 
trade with the natives for them. This fur-trade 
was especially important in the more northern 
colonies, where the cold weather both made 
agriculture less profitable and at the same time 
caused the fur-bearing animals to abound. For- 
tunes were made in the fur-trade at the North, as 
they were made in the South by raising tobacco. 

» « Industrial History of the United States." 



Marylanders and Dutch 93 

So long as the land was covered with thick 
forests there was no lack of fur-bearing animals. 
One could set traps almost anywhere with the 
certainty of finding them filled. Nearly every 
stream in the northern part of New England was 
full of the '* villages " of beaver houses, and each 
beaver-skin was worth from twenty to twenty- 
five shillings, so the result of a single season's 
work might easily make a large income for any 
hard-working trapper. 

Rarer and even more valuable were the skins 
of the otter, of the black fox, and the seal. 
From the New England Colonies ships were sent 
north to hunt along the coast, and these brought 
back cargoes of skins. The Indians, however, 
through lifelong practice were the best trappers 
and hunters, and readily sold pelts in exchange 
for the trinkets, blankets, fire-arms and ammuni- 
tion. 

Of course, with the clearing away of the 
forests and the settlement of the country, the 
fur-bearing animals became rarer or were driven 
into remoter parts of the country, and so the 
trade rapidly declined as the wilder regions were 
filled with people. 

Besides what was exported and sold, the use 
of furs and skins among the colonists themselves 



94 When America Was New 

was very great, furnishing them with clothing 
and warm robes, and in the outlying settlements 
they were used sometimes for bedding, floor 
coverings, and curtains. 

In the commerce of the colonies the fur- trade 
brought the American settlers into sharp com- 
petition, at first, with the Dutch until Dutch rule 
was over, and for many years afterward with the 
French along the interior rivers and the northern 
border. 

In this trade the French usually had the ad- 
vantage because of their ability to get along 
better with the Indians. This may have been 
due to several reasons. First, the earliest mis- 
sionaries to the Indians were Jesuit priests, and 
the converts that they made, being Romanists 
were more friendly with the French Catholics, 
than with the English Protestants. There was 
not among the French the same dislike of the 
dark-skinned races that was held by the English, 
and, thirdly, the French trappers and foresters 
not seldom married Indian squaws, and thus 
came to know the Indian customs and to be re- 
ceived as friends among the tribes. 

This, in later years, at the time of the Indian 
and colonial wars, often caused many Indians to 
take sides against the English. 



Marylanders and Dutch 95 

It will be remembered that the great attraction 
that brought Englishmen across the seas was the 
hope of finding gold, silver, and precious stones, 
as the Spaniards had done in the West Indies. 
This idea lasted for many years, except in the 
minds of a few clear-headed men like Captain 
John Smith, who early wrote home that it was a 
waste of time to seek for these things, and that 
there was more wealth to be had from the land 
and from the fisheries than from all the mines of 
the Spaniards. 

The first proof of the great value and richness 
of the land was seen when Virginia raised big 
crops of tobacco and corn ; but it was learned as 
time went on that America had nearly every sort 
of climate and could raise corn, fruits, vegetables, 
and all products in abundance. 

This gave the English a second idea— that 
their colonies would make an excellent place to 
provide work for the men who had been unable 
to find it at home. Her writers said much about 
this, and her statesmen learned to value the 
colonies and to help their growth with this 
mainly in mind. Merchants also came to think 
that companies sending settlers to America 
would bring them great returns for money spent 
in that way. 



96 When America Was New 

As soon as the colonies came to be made up 
of farms and plantations, these began to ex- 
change what they raised for goods sent from 
England, and also with one another, and then it 
was shown how easy a way of getting from one 
colony to another was provided by the deep 
rivers and the coast with its many harbors. But 
the English rulers at home agreed with most of 
the statesmen of their time in thinking that 
colonies were made for the benefit of their own 
land, and so it was not long before they made 
many laws meant to keep the colonies from 
trading with other countries, for they had good 
markets nearer than England in the West India 
Islands. They also found in France and in Hol- 
land good markets for many of the things they 
raised. 

So, although these laws to keep the trade for 
Great Britain were passed, reports made by gov- 
ernment agents of the time show that the laws 
were often broken, perhaps broken more often 
than kept, and that all sorts of cargoes were by 
one trick or another sent to the West Indies 
settlements in exchange for sugar and rum, and 
to France, where such forest products as timber, 
pitch, tar, and clapboards, were readily sold and 
cargoes of wine could be secured. All through 



Marylanders and Dutch 97 

the colonial days there was much trouble over 
this smuggling, and it helped to make ill-feeling 
between the old country and the new. 

Other things sent out by the colonists were 
ship-timbers, and furs, which brought a high 
price ; and the whaling trade, particularly in oil, 
ivory, and spermaceti for making candles, began 
just as the trade in furs was about to lessen. 

As soon as the colonists began to establish 
manufactures and to make the same things that 
were made abroad, there was complaint from 
English merchants that their business was inter- 
fered with; and then the English Parliament 
would pass laws putting taxes upon such prod- 
ucts from America. In this way the making of 
hats from beaver-skins, for example, was soon 
brought to an end in America. 

The southern colonies raising only their few 
big crops, gave little time to manufactures, and 
imported from England nearly everything they 
used, which kept them in high favor with the 
English merchants. 

The great trading- routes in America consisted 
of only a few well-made roads and those greater 
rivers that were broad enough to allow freight 
boats to make their way up-stream against the 
currents. Usually there was but one well-made 



98 When America Was New 

road between the greater colonies, since the work 
of making roads was very hard and expensive. 
They could not spare the labor to level hills, drain 
marshes, or bridge streams, except near the big 
towns. 

Along the coast where there were good har- 
bors, the people had great advantages and could 
cheaply send their products to foreign markets. 
The most important trade-route in the northern 
colonies was the Hudson River, which not only 
made traffic easy as far as Albany, but then led 
to the Great Lakes, by which Canada and the 
more western settlements could be reached in sail- 
ing vessels. 

Philadelphia and Baltimore for example grew 
to great cities because they were on waterways or 
easily reached by means of good roads. In the 
southern colonies there was less road-building be- 
cause of the fact that nearly all the people lived 
on the coast or upon waterways leading well in- 
land. This brought about the founding and 
growth of the seaports Norfolk, Charleston and 
Savannah. 

Commerce with the old country was mainly in 
timber, furs, tobacco, whale-oil, whalebone, cider, 
rum and rice. In return for these colonial car- 
goes the vessels came back loaded with hnen and 







A DUTCH WEDDING; SHOWING COSTUMES WORN IN 
EARLY AMERICAN DAYS. 



Marylanders and Dutch 99 

woolen from England and Holland, iron and 
wool from Spain, salt, spices, wine, and fruit, from 
other countries. In such commercial voyages, 
the vessels often spent years before returnmg 
home. 

There was at first very little travel in America 
except by means of waterways. All the early ex- 
plorations of Virginia were made by means of small 
boats which followed the water-courses and made 
the explorers safe against Indian attacks. The fact 
that nearly all the early colonies were upon the 
seacoast, or were near rivers and bays, and also 
the fact that in the New World timber was cheap 
and easily obtained, caused the American colo- 
nists to give themselves largely to ship-building. 

Not far from the shores there was plenty of 
oak for building the hulls of their vessels, spruce 
trees that made excellent masts, and in the days 
when all commerce was carried on in wooden 
vessels, there was nothing about a vessel that 
could not be made in the colonies. It naturally 
followed that the builders of ships, the ship car- 
penters and sailors, found ready employment in 
the colonies, and that the earliest men to prosper 
in the northern colonies were those who were 
connected with the sea and coast traffic. 

The laws at home also favored this industry. 



lOO When America Was New 

The English put a premium upon the manufac- 
ture of hemp for ship-rigging, paying the colo- 
nists six pounds (an amount that may perhaps 
be considered equal to a hundred dollars to-day) 
for every ton of hemp that was exported to the 
home country. But hemp will grow only in a 
fertile country, and therefore it was produced 
mainly in the southern colonies. A bounty also 
was offered for masts sent to England, and reg- 
ulations were made to prevent the early settlers 
from wasting trees fit for his Majesty's vessels in 
England. An official was sent through the 
forests to cut the royal mark upon such trees as 
they thought good for masts. This mark was 
what is known as the " broad arrow " and there 
was a very heavy fine for felling trees so marked. 

Notwithstanding all these attempts on the part 
of England to keep the ship timber for their own 
navy and merchant vessels, the colonists found a 
greater profit in sending the lumber to the West 
Indies, Spain and Portugal. 

Other things of which the production was en- 
couraged were tar, pitch, rosin, and turpentine, 
all of which were also used in ship-building and 
similar industries. Owing to the great profits of 
these products, from the pine forests, the English 
merchants received from the colonies more than 



Marylanders and Dutch loi 

they could use at home, and were compelled to 
ship it again to foreign countries. 

Remembering these bounties and laws will help 
us to understand the general purpose of the Eng- 
lish to make their colonies profitable only to them- 
selves, and the same purpose made them forbid 
Americans to ship tobacco in any but English ves- 
sels or to English harbors. 

There were also taxes put upon cargoes which 
were sent from one part of the colonies to an- 
other along the coast, and since in so new a 
country there were many miles unwatched along 
the coast, smuggling became very common. 
Hogsheads of tobacco were loaded by night upon 
big sailing vessels called " lighters," and these 
lighters took the smuggled loads either to foreign 
vessels that awaited them at sea, or sailed along 
the coast to other colonies where the cargo could 
be secretly sold without paying the taxes. 

To prevent this smuggling, vessels of the 
British navy sailed up and down the coast, but, 
naturally, the native sailors came to know the 
coast better than the men from abroad and found 
little difficulty in escaping them. 

All these things helped to make the Americans 
excellent sailors and clever workmen. The fact 
that they had to depend upon themselves for all 



102 When America Was New 

the various things they needed in the new coun- 
try gave them cleverness in tinkering, inventing, 
and contriving means of doing work without 
proper apphances or tools. 

So greatly did ship-building increase that it 
was not many years before the colonists were 
able not only to supply the vessels for the fishing 
trade, the great whale-ships, and the smaller 
boats that sailed along the coast, but even to 
build ships to be sold abroad. 

Along the Massachusetts coast had grown up 
thriving ports, and a ready market. Quick em- 
ployment was found for every kind of craft. In 
New York, ships were built along the Hudson 
and supplied the New York trade. In the south- 
ern colonies also a number of vessels were built, 
but fewer than in the North, because the people 
found the raising of tobacco and other agricul- 
tural products more profitable, and also because 
more vessels from England came to the southern 
coasts than to the North, and thus there was less 
need for them to build their own. Now and 
then great planters sailed their own vessels, but 
usually they were content to hire vessels built in 
the northern colonies or to use those sent from 
England. 

In regard to the smuggling, it must be remem- 



Mary landers and Dutch 103 

bered that very few of the people of the colonies 
considered it a serious wrong. Apparently they 
thought that it was unfair to tax them, and that 
if they could escape paying taxes they were not 
greatly to be blamed. Consequently, men other- 
wise very respectable were engaged in smuggling 
or made fortunes out of its profits. 



CHAPTER V 
NEW WORLD LIVING 

THE difficulty of making houses by the 
settlers was not the lack of building 
material. The forests were only too 
thick, and in them was every sort of wood ; clay 
and limestone were to be had in nearly every 
place. But they could make neither bricks nor 
mortar, for lack of kilns and tools. The great 
rocks for the same reason could not be broken 
up and shaped without more work and time than 
they could give to house-building. So they 
chose the readier ways. 

The log cabins were the easiest to make, but 
the poorer settlers often had not the teams to 
draw heavy logs, and could not spare time to 
chop and roll them until they had earned some 
money by working for others. Digging of caves 
in the side of a hill, and building little shanties 
made of poles and brush, not unlike the camps 
sportsmen make, were the first plans adopted. 
Houses also were made of sods laid upon poles. 
Roofing was sometimes of bark, or the houses 
104 



New World Living 105 

were thatched with the rushes. In both North 
and South the settlers at first sometimes copied 
the dweUings made by the Indians, building little 
huts covered with woven grass mats or with the 
skins of animals. 

Alice Morse Earle ^ tells us that in 1626, on New 
York Island, ail but one of thirty dwellings for 
Europeans were made of bark. The log cabins, 
roofed with logs, partly filled in with chips and 
made tight with clay, were the first comfortable 
dwellings in many of the colonies. The doors 
were hung on wooden or leather hinges. 

The same author describes how the earliest of 
these log houses were made by digging a shallow 
cellar, setting up logs side by side to make the 
walls, and then lining them with other logs set 
crosswise and smoothed with an axe. 

The beds were little shelves or planks fastened 
at one edge to the wall and supported at the 
other by posts set in the ground. Upon these 
rude bunks hemlock boughs made a soft bedding. 

To keep these houses warm, they were banked 
up with earth on the outside, and in winter the 
snow piled up around them helped to make them 
tight. The best of the colonists' houses were 
made of brick, as soon as they could afford to 
1 « Home Life in Colonial Days." 



lo6 When America Was New 

import them. The Dutch in New Amsterdam, 
being very thrifty, soon made for themselves 
houses that were hke those in Holland, and these 
were greatly admired by other colonists for their 
neat plastering, their ornamental brickwork, and 
their clean, sanded floors. 

Windows in the early days were always very 
small, both because glass was rare and dear and 
because this made the houses warmer. 

Another luxury rare in the colonies was iron ; 
and so the first houses were often built by fasten- 
ing logs together with wooden pins and pegs. 
The iron was so much more valuable in the early 
days than timber, that the Government of Vir- 
ginia at one time agreed to give any settler who 
was leaving his house as many nails as he had 
used in building it ; and this was done to keep 
the old house from being burned by the ov/ner so 
that the nails might be gathered from the ashes. 

Building chimneys was at first a troublesome 
matter in places where stone or brick could not 
be had, and the chimneys were made of plastered 
sticks. There was great danger from fire, and it 
was not long before laws had to be passed for- 
bidding these wood and clay chimneys. 

In New England it was usual for each house- 
holder to keep on the premises a fire-ladder, 



New World Living 107 

hooked poles, and fire-buckets made of leather. 
When an alarm of fire was given, these buckets 
were carried to the burning house, two hnes of 
neighbors were formed from the well or a stream, 
and the buckets were passed along from hand to 
hand full and returned empty, thus giving a con- 
stant supply — until, as too often happened, the 
well ran dry. The hooked poles were used to 
pull down light structures, so that they might 
not feed the flames. In 1650 the first fire engine 
used in this country was made by Joseph Jenks, 
a Welsh iron-worker who was brought to the 
colony to begin the iron industry of Massachu- 
setts. 

The interior walls of the earliest houses were 
often made of clay stiffened by mixing it with 
chopped straw and whitened by putting on a 
paste made of powdered clam shells and water. 
For floors, either earth or axe-smoothed timbers 
served. Until the late colonial days, the use oi 
paint was very rare and it was not to be found in 
any except the few expensive dwellings built of 
imported material by rich colonists. 

The rude settlers' cabins of the South were re- 
placed by substantial houses as soon as the plan- 
tations began to bring their owners plenty of 
money to import building materials from England 



lo8 When America Was New 

and to pay men for building better homes in 
Virginia. 

The way of Hfe in Virginia was not Hke that of 
any other part of the country. We have already 
told how the fertile soil made it best to raise to- 
bacco and other crops on big farms. The land 
was planted, the crop was gathered, and then, 
when the soil began to be used up, the crop next 
year was raised in a new place cleared for the 
purpose, and the old field was left to grow up in 
pine-forests again. 

Even in growing grain, they did not often try 
to bring back the richness of the soil by chang- 
ing, as was done in the Old Country, to a crop 
of clover grass now and then. The Virginia 
planter could better afford to clear a new field 
than to bother with the old one. All during 
colonial times, when land was plenty, this waste- 
ful way of farming was kept up ; so these planters 
were really " spending their capital," as the his- 
torians express it. 

But so long as rich land was plenty, no men in 
America lived so well or enjoyed wealth like 
that of the big plantation owners. In fact, nearly 
all of the life in Virginia was carried on in these 
enormous plots of ground under the leadership 
of their owners. 



New World Living 109 

There were almost no towns at the South. 
Even near the coast, where we might expect 
there would be a need for great shipping-houses, 
not many towns did grow up, simply because the 
wide rivers dividing into many branches and run- 
ning far up into the country enabled most of the 
planters to build docks on their own estates and 
to load vessels right there. Also, the planters 
could receive at these landing places the cargoes 
of goods sent from England in return. 

Nor was there any need for towns near the 
plantations. Each great estate carried on all its 
own work. It raised its own food, had its own 
tradesmen — carpenters, blacksmiths, mechanics — 
attached to each great house, with a large body 
of clerks, overseers, superintendents, and other 
agents who carried on the work for the proprietor. 
Consequently, even where there were town settle- 
ments, these consisted only of a few houses at 
some crossroads, with possibly a church and a 
court-house, used for meetings of those men who 
governed the affairs of the colonies. 

The way of life in the northern and middle 
colonies was very different. The farmers owned 
smaller plots of ground than the planters, and at 
first did not raise crops that they could send to 
England or to foreign lands. Their farms were 



no When America Was New 

used to raise food for themselves and their house- 
hold, and for their animals. This made them at 
first poorer than the planters, and they had to be 
content with plain homes, poor clothing, and 
very few of the comforts of hfe. 

But they raised the raw materials they needed, 
and because they could not send abroad for 
goods, they learned to make them. Thus it was 
that the northern people slowly changed, as they 
grew in numbers, from a race of farmers, to a race 
of manufacturers, who could make out of the 
things that their country produced useful articles 
to send abroad, or even to exchange with the 
rich planters. This made work in the north for 
the builders of ships, the sailors, the storekeepers, 
and all the class of merchants who carried on the 
trade in the colonies, and the commerce abroad. 
Around the harbors these men built their homes, 
and their wharves. Besides the busy ports, the 
building of vessels had brought about the es- 
tablishment of big shipyards and near these were 
thrivmg towns where the men connected with 
this great industry could live, not too far away 
from their places of work. 

The fisheries, employing large fleets of fishing- 
boats, also brought about large settlements where 
fishing was the chief industry and the prepara- 



New World Living in 

tion of the fish for export was carried on in fac- 
tories. 

Further from the coast, towns were more self- 
supporting and more divided into petty trades. 
The earhest buildings, after a {q\v farmhouses, 
were apt to be the church, the schoolhouse, the 
blacksmith shop, and the village store, and many 
of the New England settlements even to-day con- 
tain little else. 

Naturally the men who grew up in these New 
England towns were less dependent upon their 
neighbors than the poorer classes of the South, 
but they were also less acquainted with what 
went on in the world. There was more inter- 
course between the southern colonies and the 
home country. The great planters were accus- 
tomed to send the young men of the family to 
England or Europe, to finish their education, 
which kept the neighborhood better acquainted 
with all that was going on in England and tended 
to make them follow the English fashions and 
to adopt the prejudices of the Old Country. 

The New Englander, especially if not dwelling 
in a coast town, was more narrow-minded than 
the Virginian, but he was apt to be more inde- 
pendent in his opinions and less affected by the 
ideas of the Old World. Of course this does not 



112 When America Was New 

apply to the men of either section who Uved in the 
larger settlements that were closely connected 
with the mother country and came into frequent 
contact with the visitors from home. But even 
in these places there was a distinct line drawn 
between the English and the colonials ; and the 
interests of the officials from England, the officers 
of the British army, and the traveling merchants, 
were in many cases directly opposed to the inter- 
ests of the colonials. As time went on, these 
differences of opinion became greater and helped 
to bring about the separation between the mother 
country and her colonies. 

Next to shelter, and home-making, and even 
before matters of politics, comes the question of 
food. 

Food was very plentiful in the colonies, but of 
course differed according to the locality. For 
the first-comers deer-flesh was abundant, espe- 
cially in Virginia, where the deer were often 
killed by setting rings of fire around large tracts 
of woods to destroy all the wild animals within. 
Most of the deer were killed, not for food, but 
for the hide, buckskin being used for all sorts of 
clothing. Turkeys were equally abundant, and 
frequent mention is made by early writers of the 
great flocks of wild pigeons that were hours in 



New World Living 113 

passing. In short, the woods abounded with 
every sort of game, and many sorts now very 
rare were then looked upon as pests and 
had to be killed in order to save the grain 
fields. 

To raise Indian corn, or maize, the colonists 
had learned from the Indians; and this was a 
plentiful food, wholesome and appetizing, whether 
eaten as popcorn, parched, or ground into meal 
for bread-making. 

Sugar was rare, except that made from the 
maple sap, of which all were very fond and which 
was used for every sort of sweetening. The tap- 
ping of maple-trees, the boiling down of the 
syrup in big kettles, and the making of the sugar, 
should perhaps be included in the amusements 
of the colonists, as many neighbors joined in the 
work and made it the occasion for frolics and 
fun-making. 

Quite as plentiful as the products of the fields 
and woods were those of the sea. The earliest 
attraction that brought fleets across the Atlantic 
was the great fishery Banks of the northern coast 
where were cod and other food-fish in what 
seemed an endless supply. Captain John Smith 
was one of the earliest who had the wisdom to 
see that the great catch of codfish promised more 



114 When America Was New 

wealth than all the mines of gold and silver of 
which others were dreaming. 

Besides the cod, there were mackerel, herring, 
bass, and other deep-sea fish, as well as the fresh- 
water fish, the shellfish and other creatures that 
crowded the rivers, brooks, and creeks. All 
were plentiful, big, and easy to catch. It is hard 
for us to believe the stories of the giant lobsters 
and crabs of the time, for it is said that in New 
York Bay lobsters were caught as big as a man. 
Oysters in the same locality grew to a foot in 
length, and the Virginia oysters were quite as 
large. 

We read similar wonders of the swarms of 
fowl in the air, and, indeed, the accounts of the 
colonial abundance of food read like fairy-tales. 
Imagine what it must have been to a poor man, 
who came from the starving lands abroad where 
death was the penalty if he dared to set a snare 
in the woods to catch a bird or a hare, to find 
himself in a land where what he had been used to 
look upon as the luxuries of the rich were so 
plentiful that not only could every one fare richly 
every day, but all that could be taken from the 
vast abundance seemed to make no impression 
upon it. 

It is no wonder that the men who grow up 



New World Living 115 

amid such surroundings believed that the great 
continent to which they had come had homes 
and to spare for all the world ; it is no wonder 
that they threw wide the gates and begged the 
poor of all lands to join them in this region of 
plenty. But the Americans have ended like a 
great crowd of reckless boys, who, on being ad- 
mitted to a table set for some rich feast, have 
wasted and destroyed the food that should have 
provided for them and their successors; they 
have Hved recklessly without a thought of pro- 
viding for the generations that are to come after 
them. 

The number and amount of the dishes served 
at their meals seem to us almost incredible, but 
their large appetites were no doubt due to the 
continual Hfe in the open air and exercise of a 
severe kind taken every day. The English at 
this time seem also to have had the same great 
capacity for eating enormously at the two main 
meals, which were usually served one about 
noontime and the other very late in the after- 
noon. Even for breakfast, such solid dishes as 
legs of mutton were not at all uncommon. But 
the ways of the table will be taken up in a later 
chapter. 

The nature of the lives led in the colonies de- 



ii6 When America Was New 

pended much upon the fact that all the settle- 
ments were made in a land already occupied by- 
native races. The white men in America could 
not live as they had done in the Old World, for 
they were always compelled to think of the thou- 
sands of Indians who looked on the white men 
as invaders. 

In speaking of the American Indians we must 
not forget that, though there is some hkeness 
among them all, there are countless differences, 
and that to-day we know of hundreds of tribes, 
and even of a great number of different Indian 
races. Yet the same word is so used for them all 
that in speaking of an Indian one cannot tell 
whether an Esquimaux is meant or a Patagonian 
— the Esquimaux being a stout, short native 
living amid almost perpetual ice at the North, 
while the Patagonian, living almost at the other 
side of the world, is tall, spare, and differs in 
all his ways of life. 

Our Indians differ nearly as much when we 
compare those of the extreme West with those 
of the great central plains, or either of these 
with the races that dwell on the eastern coast. 
The Indians are said by a recent book of refer- 
ence to differ among themselves quite as much 



New World Living 117 

as does the Caucasian from the Jewish, or Semitic. 
Even their languages do not seem to have arisen 
from a common tongue. 

The Indians with whom the colonists at first 
had to do were, of course, those of the eastern 
coasts, and of these there were two main branches, 
the Algonquin and tl\e Iroquois families. 

The stories of the earher explorers all agree 
in describing the Indians whom they first met as 
friendly and kindly people, living, as these men 
described it, in a Golden Age ; and this seems to 
have been true as to nearly all of them along the 
eastern coast. The white men were looked upon 
with wonder, but were not thought of as enemies 
until by their own wrongdoing they had taught 
the Indians they were not to be trusted. Even 
after by kidnapping, by robbery, and by the 
murder of the natives, the Indians had learned 
to look upon white men as enemies, there was a 
long period during which the fear was upon the 
Indians' side, and the approach of the white men 
with their dreaded weapons would send the 
Indians scurrying into the woods. During these 
earlier years such attacks as the Indians made 
were timid and easily repulsed. Both the 
Virginia settlers and those in New England had 



ii8 When America Was New - 

no trouble in keeping the Indians in subjection, 
for they were greatly impressed by the fire-arms 
of the day, poor as these were. 

Where the Indians were kindly treated, their 
lands fairly paid for, and the treaties made with 
them were kept, they remained on good terms 
with the settlers, as in Maryland and in Pennsyl- 
vania. But the American Indian was not a 
coward, and he was sharp enough to learn very 
early that in the woods and in fighting after the 
Indian manner, he had little to dread from the 
white man, despite his gun, his armor, and his 
sword. 

Some of the white settlers, against the judg- 
ment of the more prudent among them, were 
tempted by the profit to be made from the trade 
to supply the Indians with guns and gunpowder. 
Once armed in the same way, the Indian, aided 
by his practice in war, by his knowledge of 
woodcraft, and his great endurance, became a 
match for any white man except the few who 
had learned the tricks of Indian strategy from 
the red men themselves. 

The Indian soon became treacherous, sly, 
cruel, bloodthirsty, and unforgiving; but men 
are coming to see that these bad qualities were 
the result of the way in which the Indians were 



New World Living 119 

treated by the settlers. They were treacherous 
only after they found that the white men had no 
honor in keeping their word ; they were sly be- 
cause they were fighting at a disadvantage and 
against those whose weapons were superior, and 
who knew more by long experience about how 
to fight in large bodies. Besides, the Indian ex- 
pected in his fighting the same slyness that he 
showed. It was their way of making war, and 
was by all Indians considered fair. It may be 
said also that their cruelties were no greater than 
those of any other savage people, and that they 
held themselves ready to bear the same tortures 
they inflicted. 

That there was no greater cruelty in the 
Indian than in the colonist will be admitted by 
all who have read the history of Indian wars in 
America and know of what cruelty the white 
settlers were capable when the Indians fell into 
their hands. Besides, we must not forget that 
with the Indian the fight against the settlers was 
a fight for the lives of himself and his family. 
The coming of the white man would bring about 
the destruction of the forests and this would 
make it impossible for the Indian hunter to live. 

From the Indians the colonists learned the 
whole art of living in the New World. If it had 



120 When America Was New 

not been for their help the early settlers could 
never have lived beyond a few months, either at 
Jamestown or at Plymouth. To the Indian we 
owe the placing of our best roads, which follow 
the Indian trails ; from the Indian guides was 
learned the best way of getting from one part of 
the country to another ; the methods of Indian 
hunters, fishermen and trappers were copied and 
seldom improved. 

In agriculture the whites learned from the In- 
dians the burning over of land, the use of fish 
for enriching it, how to grow corn, beans, pump- 
kins. And to the Indian we owe the potato, the 
Indian corn, and the tomato, as well as the per- 
simmon and the peanut. Other foods we owe to 
them are maple sugar and syrup, pemmican (a 
mixture of meat and corn) and many ways of 
preserving meat and vegetables. There is a long 
list of curative herbs which the white doctors 
learned from the Indian men and women, and 
there are many articles of domestic use, such as 
dyestuffs, for which we owe thanks to the red 
race. 

It is doubtful whether there were as many In- 
dians in America when the Europeans came as 
there are to-day ; but there is no doubt that many 
tribes have almost disappeared because they 



New World Living 121 

would not change their ways, or were killed in 
wars with the whites. 

The Indians' way of hfe, while very different 
from that of the white men, was by no means 
such as to show them a degraded race. They 
had learned to make use very ably of what they 
needed to bring them the comfort they desired. 
Their houses protected them from the weather ; 
they were skilful enough to secure a plentiful 
supply of food, not only by hunting, but also by 
raising crops. Their dress suited the conditions 
of their life, whether they lived so far north as to 
dress mainly in skins, or in milder climates used 
fabrics woven from plant fibres. Their wampum 
served the purposes of money ; they had made 
for themselves in their bows and stone hatchets, 
and bone-awls, or needles ; in their stone pestles 
and mortars ; in their clay pottery and their 
woven baskets, all the tools and utensils necessary 
in their way of life. They could make fire by 
friction, twirling a sharpened stick against an- 
other, and their methods of cookery and their 
medical knowledge were not greatly inferior to 
that of the earliest settlers. 

One of the greatest of the Indian inventions 
was the canoe, made either of a hollowed log 
burned out by fire, or of birch bark stretched 



122 When America Was New 

most skilfully over hardwood ribs and sewed to- 
gether with fibres or deer sinews. 

The most important thing to remember about 
the Indian and his relations to the white settlers 
is the enormous amount of land that was neces- 
sary to support an Indian family, compared to 
the small farm that would give a white man and 
his family enough to live upon ; for from this 
fact it came about that although before many 
years, the Indians were few as compared to the 
white men, yet the clearing of the land and the 
dwelling of the white settlers along the coasts and 
rivers crowded the Indians out of their hunting- 
grounds and forced them either to fight the set- 
tlers or to move into regions where they were 
driven to fight with other Indians for the right to 
hunt and fish and make camps. 

From this fact came those long years of In- 
dian wars that changed the whole nature of the 
American colonists and either drove the Indians 
into the interior or made them mere vagabonds 
and hangers-on about the white settlements, 
drunken and worthless survivors of tribes once 
worthy of respect. 

As to the Indians, Reuben G. Thwaites \ gives 
an excellent general account of their relations 
J " Stepping-Stones of American History." 



New World Living 123 

with the white settlers. He points out that in 
the southern colonies there were about fifty thou- 
sand, of somewhat mild disposition but good 
fighters when roused. These Indians learned 
many of the white men's arts, and quickly im- 
proved, so that at the time of the Revolution 
they were excellent farmers and prosperous. 

The Indians with whom the northern settlers 
had to deal were a more war-like race, hunters 
and fishermen, and of a more wandering nature. 
One group of tribes, the Iroquois, was the most 
daring and most independent of the Indian race. 
They were early attacked by the French and 
therefore came to be more friendly toward the 
English than the other Indian tribes, which was a 
great advantage to the American colonists. 

Most of the Indians the colonists knew lived 
not far from the coast, where fish were abundant. 
Just back of these there was a tract of country 
where were few Indians except for small villages 
far separated from one another. The Indians 
who hved further west seldom came far enough 
east to come into conflict with the colonists. 
Therefore the early settlers had to fight against 
only a few of the Indian tribes. 

The thing that brought white men and Indians 
into conflict was the struggle for the fishing and 



124 When America Was New 

hunting grounds, and in this continual struggle 
there was no way of making a lasting peace with 
the Indians, since there was no recognized Indian 
government that could control the warriors. 
They acted mainly in small parties and could 
seldom stand against the settlers when united. 
This, too, tells us why the Indian method of 
fighting was made up of small raids and sudden 
attacks followed by a retreat into the forests. 
The traders who went among the Indian tribes 
were often a bad lot of men who cheated and 
robbed the savages, and taught them to drink, and 
thus made them enemies to all the whites. 

A thing that made trouble was the very differ- 
ent idea about the owning of land among the In- 
dians and white people. The white man be- 
lieved that land once owned was his forever ; the 
Indian, after a few years would move away to a 
new region and naturally expected that the white 
men who took up his lands would do the same. 
This led to wars that in the end meant the driv- 
ing out of the weaker party, and so the Indian 
had to suffer. 

The same historian shows us how fortunate 
it was that the English met so bold and brave a 
foe instead of the more timid and yielding race 
whom the Spanish enslaved. Thus the English 



New World Living 125 

were left to do their own work, were taught 
bravery and hardihood in warfare, and were kept 
from spreading westward so fast as to make the 
colonies weak. 

Yet it was the presence of the Indians that 
made the main difference in the lives and homes 
of the settlers from what these had been in the 
old country. In thinking of their hardships we 
must remember that many of these were not new. 
They had been used to poorly heated houses, 
though in a land where winters were less severe. 
So far as food was concerned, the new world 
brought to most of them greater plenty than they 
had known. Though they made many things for 
themselves, so had they done in England or in 
Europe. The women were used to spinning and 
weaving, to sewing and mending ; to cooking in 
pots, kettles, and brick ovens ; to making their 
own bread, to the same housewifely work they 
did in America. But the Indians taught the 
colonials, both men and women, to be watchful, 
brave, and ready to fight for their lives. The 
women learned to shoot their husbands' guns, to 
melt lead, and to mould bullets, to be on their 
guard against attack when the fathers and sons 
were away, to nurse the wounded in times of war- 
fare. 



126 When America Was New 

Becoming brave and self-reliant, the women of 
the colonies thought Httle of going alone on 
horseback miles from home, and had nothing to 
fear except in the Indian country. They became 
their husbands' helpers and companions in all 
kinds of work, and some learned to handle the 
axe, to drive oxen, to plow, and to be good at all 
sorts of farm-work. 

Indoors, besides much else, they provided the 
clothing for all, from the raw material to the 
finished garments. 

An important crop that was grown in New 
England was flax, and a large part of the labor 
of the women was the preparation of this flax 
and the spinning of it into thread, the weaving of 
the thread into cloth, and its making into gar- 
ments. A bride's outfit was hardly complete 
without the spinning-wheel ; and girls were proud 
to provide themselves with an ample stock of 
linen with which to begin housekeeping, and 
there was much rivalry among the housewives in 
spinning and weaving, much pride in their skill. 

Besides the making of thread and cloth, the 
women were famous cooks, kept up their gar- 
denSj and, despite their housework, could spend 
much time in visiting, even though they were 
often busy knitting, spinning, or doing other 



New World Living 127 

small pieces of work, while they gossiped with a 
neighbor. 

In order to provide themselves with that great 
household necessity, enough soap, the colonists 
as soon as they had domestic animals, used to 
save all the fatty portions, boil them down in 
great kettles, and then add lye made by letting 
water run through a barrel or trough (often 
home-made) over a great quantity of wood ashes 
saved from their big fires. The strength of the 
lye was tested by seeing how high it would float 
an Ggg or a potato. When the lye and soap- 
grease were boiled down together, they turned 
into soft-soap, which was stored in barrels for 
use. For toilet soap they sometimes used the 
bayberry wax, which made a hard soap, but this 
was a luxury, and not common. 

It was the custom in many of the colonies not 
to have more than one wash-day a month, which 
could be done partly because most households 
had an ample supply of linen, and because in 
poorer households few washable clothes were 
worn. 

Children also had their work to do in the 
household, and were strictly trained. They 
were taught to show great respect for their elders, 
saluting them as they passed, sometimes standing 



128 When America Was New 

up at table while their elders ate, and were 
expected to give a helping hand upon the farms 
and in the house. In this way they learned to 
do all sorts of work, and as they grew up became 
fitted to take their parents' place in the world. 
In fact, the colonial childhood soon came to an 
end. Both boys and girls grew up quickly, took 
part in the farm or housework as soon as their 
strength would let them, and were spared for 
the school only in the winter months when the 
farm work ceased, and there was less to do at 
home. 

The play-days of the youngest were spent in 
games that were like what they saw around them. 
The boys pretended to be Indians, or hunters, or 
fishermen ; made bows and arrows or wooden 
guns, willow whistles, harnessed their dogs to 
little home-made carts, and so on. The girls, 
likewise, unable to buy dolls, made them out of 
corn husks, sticks, flowers and leaves ; and played 
house in the fence corners or near the wood-piles. 
In short, they made their own playthings or 
joined in the games that, like tag, need nothing 
but children themselves. 

But at an early age, both girls and boys began 
to learn every kind of work — the boys to farm, 
to use the axe, to drive, the girls to cook, to spin, 



New World Living 129 

to weave, to do housework ; and to this early 
beginning the colonists owed their skill in all 
callings. 

It was a time when big families were many, 
and a time when the larger a family became, the 
stronger was the household, and the better the 
chances of all for getting on in the world, since 
work was plenty, and brought quick returns. 



CHAPTER VI 
MAKING THE HOMESTEAD 

A WELL known writer for the young who 
died in 1901 was the Reverend Elijah 
Kellogg. He wrote many stories, par- 
ticularly for boys, a number of them specially 
successful in giving true pictures of early hfe in 
America ; but perhaps the most valuable book 
that he ever wrote is called " Good Old Times ; 
or, Grandfather's Struggles for a Homestead." 
This book is hardly a made-up story. The facts 
in it are taken partly from an old diary and partly 
from the lips of a woman who was the wife of 
the first settler — the " grandfather " named in the 
title — and who lived to an old age. 

While histories tell us what is done by a great 
number of people, it is only in diaries, letters or 
in such stories as this one of Kellogg's that we 
find a true picture of the life of a single family 
and of their making of a home in the wilderness. 
Strangely enough, too, after we have learned the 
life of one pioneer family we find ourselves better 
acquainted with the life of the time than we can 
130 



Making the Homestead 131 

be if we have simply read general statements 
about a whole region or a whole race. It is as 
if we ourselves had gone with this first settler 
into the woods and, as a member of his family, 
had fought against the forests, against wild 
animals, against the Indians, and had step by 
step built up the home where our descendants 
were to dwell for generations afterward. 

The settler whose story is told was a Scotch- 
man, but his home in the old country was in 
Ireland. He was one of those sent by the 
English into Ireland after they had cleared one 
part of the Irish Catholics who had fought against 
the English Crown. 

This man's name, as given in the book, is 
real ; it was Hugh McLennan. The time treated 
of was about 1730, but the conditions that he 
found in America, owing to the fact that he made 
for himself a home in the unbroken forest, were 
much the same as those that surrounded the 
earliest settlers who moved inland from the coast. 

It was a time when the making of a living in 
Ireland was almost an impossibility, and this 
settler was really' driven to America in order to 
find bread for his family and work for himself. 
His voyage across the ocean is described, par- 
ticularly his cleverness in helping the captain to 



132 When America Was New 

mend a broken rudder caused by stormy 
weather ; for he was a man who had been trained 
in the use of tools, and it was to this largely that 
he owed his prosperity in America. 

He brought with him from the Old Country 
almost nothing — a little clothing, his wife's spin- 
ning-wheel, and a few articles of real necessity. 
When the family landed, they went to the 
northern colonies and settled there, because they 
were told that the Irish were not then welcome 
in Massachusetts. 

For some time they Hved in Portland, then a 
small town, the people of which made their 
living in connection with ship-building and the 
fisheries. 

But the thing that had brought them to 
America was the hope of owning land. At 
home, not only was the land held at high prices, 
but, owing to the uncertainty of crops, even the 
owners of small farms could hardly do more than 
live from hand to mouth, without hope of laying 
up anything to provide for their children. 

After staying for a while in Portland with a 
relative almost as poor as themselves, who, how- 
ever, gave them house-room, McLennan heard 
that there were certain large tracts of land about 
ten miles from the coast, in the middle of an al- 



Making the Homestead 133 

most unbroken forest, that had been given by the 
government to soldiers who had served in the 
Indian wars. Many of these soldiers did not 
care to use the land themselves, and were only 
too glad to sell it at a small price. 

At first, the idea of taking his wife and chil- 
dren so far from the settlement and exposing 
them to the dangers of Indian attacks and the 
hardships of life in the wilderness, made McLen- 
nan hesitate to buy a tract from those offered. 
But he brooded upon the project until his wife 
learned why he was hesitating, and bravely in- 
sisted that they had come to America for no 
other reason than to build up a home for them- 
selves, and told him that it was better to risk any 
danger than to fail in the very object that had 
brought them across the sea. 

Thus encouraged, the settler put a bag of pro- 
visions upon his back, and going by the rough 
paths that had been cleared through the woods 
by the lumber workers, made a careful examina- 
tion of the sections that were for sale. He chose, 
finally, a thickly-wooded section in which there 
were plenty of streams, and in a region where 
there had been a number of roads or rough 
openings cut into the forest for the sake of drag- 
ging out lumber. 



134 When America Was New 

For the tract thus picked out he paid the last 
money he had in the world, and leaving his wife 
still in the town, where she supported herself and 
her children by spinning and by such odd work 
as she could get in helping other housewives, he 
undertook to make for them such a rough shelter 
as would serve until he could build better. 

Fortunately, he found a tumbled down shanty 
that had been used by a party of woodchoppers 
many years before, but it had been abandoned so 
long that young trees had sprung up inside the 
rough enclosure of logs. Using his snow-shoes 
as shovels, he cleared the old camp of snow, and 
by a number of days' hard work, mended and 
built up the rough log walls and covered them 
with a brush roof, leaving a hole in the middle 
for the smoke to escape. 

As soon as the hut thus prepared was made 
into the roughest sort of shelter, he returned to 
town and brought his wife and children to their 
new home. It was in the latter part of March 
that the family reached the camp in the woods, 
and they found that a heavy fall of snow had 
broken down the brush roof and undone a large 
part of the work that had made it a shelter. 

The wife and children were placed on an old 
quilt laid m the shelter of the roots of a great 



Making the Homestead 135 

tree that had been upturned by a storm, and a 
fire was built to keep them from freezing. The 
wife and children, we are told, were all barefoot. 

A few hours' work, however, made the camp 
once more habitable, and it at least served to 
shelter them from the winds, and by the aid of 
great fires they were able to keep warm. 

They began life with nothing more than a 
little store of food they had brought from town, 
a horse and a cow, a few quilts and blankets, the 
clothes upon their backs, and a little bedding. 
The wool and flax-wheels with which the wife 
was to help earn the family living could not be 
used in this little hut, and a few tools the father 
of the family had bought while working as a ship- 
carpenter, were their only means of earning 
money. The most important of these was, of 
course, the axe, and it is interesting to learn that 
even at that time the shape of the American axe 
differed from one which was used in the Old 
Country. The American axe, being narrower 
and heavier, was better fitted to its work of cut- 
ting great trees than the broader, short-handled 
axe mainly used in the old countries for chopping 
and trimming smaller trees of the newer forests. 
It had taken McLennan some months to learn 
the use of the long-handled American axe, but 



136 When America Was New 

being naturally handy in using tools he soon be- 
came as expert as any of the American lumber- 
men. 

During the early spring months the family 
lived on the provisions they had brought from 
town, helped out by the cow's milk, which, in- 
deed, was the main support of the younger chil- 
dren, and by animal food for which they traded 
with the Indians, giving the squaws thread and a 
few needles in exchange for game that the In- 
dians shot in the woods. 

They had no dishes, but ate from broad chips 
of wood ; they had no earthenware, and the only 
drinking vessel in the house was a single pewter 
porringer, or shallow cup with a handle ; their 
only light was given by the great fire on the 
hearth, or pine splinters or knots which they cut 
in the woods ; for drink, they had the spring 
water and the maple sap, and they slept all in 
one room upon rough beds of boughs, covered 
with blankets. 

The first few months were given to clearing the 
land in order that they might plant seed. The 
trees were chopped down and left in a great 
tangle as they iell. When by weeks of chopping 
a wide place had thus been made ready, the 
whole family carried from their fire flaming 



Making the Homestead 137 

torches of pine wood, and set fire to it. This 
was the only means they had of getting rid of 
the trees, and, besides, was a most excellent way 
of preparing the soil for planting. 

As soon as the fire was out, and while the 
ashes were yet warm and the soil softened by the 
heat, they planted the seeds which they had 
brought from town. While the " burn " was be- 
ing made, of course all the animals of the forest 
were driven out of the tract burned over, and the 
family watching saw a multitude of raccoons, 
woodchucks, rabbits, skunks, partridges, foxes 
and field-mice •• all running for dear hfe to gain 
the shelter of the forest.'* There also darted out 
of the burned land a great gray wolf, and this 
the settler shot, for the horse and cow were often 
in great danger from these animals which were 
still common in the unsettled parts of Maine. 

Once the land was cleared, they planted corn, 
pumpkins, peas, and a few potatoes, and other 
vegetables. These, in the new soil made rich by 
the wood ashes and protected by the heavy coat- 
ing they made, sprouted quickly, and before long 
they were sure of a good harvest. In addition to 
what they thus raised they sometimes got meat 
and corn from the Indians in exchange for milk 
or for maple sugar. Raccoons, partridges, and 



138 When America Was New 

porcupines, were now and then shot by the set- 
tler who always worked with his gun beside him 
while in the woods, and they began to live better. 

The comforts of their home were increased by 
some bits of rough furniture made by the settler 
upon the stormy days when he could not work 
in the woods. He could not saw timber for him- 
self nor afford the time and trouble necessary to 
go to town for sawn boards, but by means of his 
axe and wedges he split up logs and then out of 
the slabs made rude stools by driving stakes into 
the holes bored by an auger. 

By the use of the broad-axe and the adze (a 
tool like an axe except that it has a slightly bent 
blade set on the handle crosswise, in the same 
way that a hoe-blade is set), Hugh could do 
very neat carpenter-work. By means of the adze 
it was possible to smooth or to hew the surface 
of the split slabs and thus to make rough boards 
out of which to build walls, flooring, and furni- 
ture. 

One of the most useful pieces of furniture in 
these rough huts was the high-back settle. 
When a fire was built on the hearth, it sent the 
hot air roaring up through the chimney and 
caused the cold air to leak in through the 
crevices left between the logs. Thus, when sit- 



Making the Homestead 139 

ting by the fire, though warm in front, one might 
be chilled by the drafts that came against the 
back ; and the high settle not only protected 
from these drafts, but also tended to keep the 
heat from being wasted in the big room. 
McLennan also at a later time made bedsteads 
for the family, rough frames upon which to put 
their mattresses of rough ticks stufted with beech 
leaves, and hewed out trenches or wooden dishes 
to hold their food. In fact, there were very few 
things that could not be made by the clever 
choppers of those days. 

Besides attending to the spinning, which 
brought them food when the thread was ex- 
changed for meat with the Indians or when it 
was sold in town, Hugh's wife, Elizabeth, not 
only took care of her household, but also taught 
herself to shoot almost as well as her husband. 

There were some cleared patches of land, the 
result of forest fires, where the soil had become 
dry and sandy, and in these berries grew in 
abundance. To these patches there often came 
great flocks of wild pigeons. These birds were 
so numerous that, as Edward Eggleston tells us, 
they were often whole days in passing, and 
almost darkened the sky by their numbers. To 
shoot these and other small game was a great 



140 When America Was New 

help in providing food for the family, and during 
her husband's absence Elizabeth and the eldest 
boy often went hunting. She also when in town 
bought a pig that thrived and fattened upon the 
beech-nuts and acorns in the woods; and this 
added to the family stock of food, when made 
into pork, without adding to their expenses. 

Not very long afterward the family, seeing 
that there was plenty of wild hay to be cut in the 
woods, secured half a dozen sheep, and thus 
gradually they were becoming self-supporting, 
owmg to the products of their fields and the ani- 
mals gained by barter or the money earned by 
lumber. 

To save the need for going to the mill, Hugh 
hollowed out a great log in the shape of a mortar, 
and cutting a heavy log, tied a rope to it, fasten- 
ing the rope to a long limb above so that the log 
hung just over the opening in the mortar. Put- 
ting grain into the mortar and pulling upon the 
rope so as to make the log pound it, they were 
able to grind up corn into meal from which they 
could make bread. This form of corn-mill was 
often used in the early days. The brooks fur- 
nished them with a few fish, and this, too, helped 
to vary their diet. 

In every way that was possible they lived upon 



Making the Homestead 141 

what the land furnished them, and saved all the 
money that came to them for the purpose of 
buying a yoke of oxen, without which it was im- 
possible to move the great logs needed to build 
themselves a better house. The oxen were 
needed also to get out of the woods the big tree- 
trunks which had been marked as fit for masts 
and ship-timber for the royal navies. 

As already explained, these bigger trees — all 
that were over three feet through — had been 
marked and reserved, the colonists being for- 
bidden to cut them for their own use. But 
there was money to be made out of these trees, 
nevertheless, for the colonists could cut them 
down, drag them out of the woods, and be well 
paid for their trouble. 

As soon as they were able to buy the oxen, 
Hugh decided to build himself a decent dwelling. 
The old one had walls only three logs high and 
was too low for the family to stand upright ex- 
cept near the middle of their one room. By aid 
of the oxen, great logs were cut, dragged to a fit 
spot, and then hewed carefully into square tim- 
bers. These were fitted closely together, jointed 
at the corners, and a big, weather-tight and 
strong house was soon built. Instead of a hard 
dirt floor, boards were hewed out, laid smoothly. 



142 When America Was New 

and tightly joined. There were windows with 
strong shutters for warmth and security, oiled 
paper instead of glass to let in light, and there 
was a heavy door ordinarily fastened inside by a 
long wooden latch to which a string was attached, 
going through the hole in the door and hanging 
outside. By pulHng this string the latch could 
be raised, and thus one could easily open the 
door when " the latch-string was out," — a phrase 
we still hear. But upon pulling the string inside^ 
there was no way of reaching the latch. To 
fasten the door more securely, arrangement was 
made for putting two heavy bars across it on the 
inside. These once in place, the heavy door 
would resist even the attacks of the Indians- so 
long as the house was not set on fire. 

In the old camp-dwelling the housewife had to 
cook either upon flat stones laid in the ashes or 
in the iron pot hung over the fire, gypsy-fashion. 
In order to bake, it was then necessary to upturn 
the iron pot and to heap embers upon it so as to 
make it into a sort of an oven. In the new 
house there was a well-built stone hearth with a 
fireplace and oven, of stones neatly laid in 
mortar, and a chimney instead of a mere hole in 
the roof; but the chimney, for lack of bricks, 
was built up of crossed sticks thickly coated 




EARLY HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS AND FURNITURE. 



Making the Homestead 143 

with clay inside and out to keep them from 
burning. 

The roof was made of hemlock bark cut into 
slabs and laid shingle-fashion. In winter, by 
piling brush against the house-walls and packing 
snow close around it, it became a very warm 
dweUing, since snow keeps the heat in and the 
cold out. 

One great advantage of this larger house was 
the fact that it gave the housewife, Elizabeth, 
room to use her spinning-wheels and to set up 
a loom, so that she could make clothes out of 
threads that she had spun upon her wheels. 
Such home-spun and home-woven cloths were 
of the soundest quahty and would last for genera- 
tions. In fact, many pieces of such household 
Hnen still exist, being kept as heirlooms. 

There was a second story to the new house, 
and this was reached by a sloping log in which 
steps were made by cutting notches. 

After about three years of this life in the 
wilderness, Hugh McLennan and his family had 
become fairly prosperous. They owned a yoke 
or two of oxen, chickens, hogs, sheep, two cows 
and a heifer. They had bought pewter plates to 
replace the chips from which they had at first 
eaten ; they had iron spoons, knives and forks. 



J 44 When America Was New 

and could even drink coffee once a week as a 
great luxury. The children had learned to be 
of great use, indoors and out, and the eldest, 
particularly, had become a trained woodsman. 

This boy, now about eleven, had from the 
beginning made friends with the younger Indians 
who lived in a summer camp not far away to 
which they came for the sake of raising corn 
and fishing ; and the white boy was always wel- 
come as a playfellow among the young Indians. 
From them he learned the secrets of the woods- 
life ; he learned to shoot with bow and arrow, to 
track animals, to make his way noiselessly 
through the woods, and, in short, became as 
skilful in woodcraft as the redmen themselves. 

Among the outlying settlements the same 
mingling of the white and Indian boys occurred 
in thousands of cases, and this had very great re- 
sults in later years when these boys grew up and 
were engaged in wars against Indians, or, still 
later, had to fight in the wilderness against the 
royal troops. It brought about an entirely new 
method of warfare, based upon what the Indians 
had found to be the best way of fighting in the 
wilderness. 

It is not necessary to follow further the fortunes 
of this particular family at this time, though the 



Making the Homestead 145 

same book upon which the foregoing account is 
based contains a full story of the fortunes of such 
settlers when there came to be wars with the 
Indians and also of their subsequent life as the 
community about them grew and became civi- 
lized. What these people did in the woods of 
Maine, — the story of their fight for a living, 
would need but little change to apply to the hfe 
of almost any of the families who settled those 
parts of New England that lay somewhat back 
from the coast. As soon as they made a clear- 
ing, it became a farm, and the family became 
farmer folk. 

It has already been pointed out that the life of 
the settlers and colonists, their houses, and their 
farms, or lands, differed according to the work 
that they found to be done — that is, whether they 
became sailors and builders of ships, farmers and 
raisers of crops, lumbermen and dwellers in the 
woods, or carried on the transporting of goods to 
and from the interior upon the waterways or by 
the use of pack-animals. But, in general, their 
homes were much like that of Hugh McLennan 
and his family, and they made home comforts 
for themselves by the same clever use of the ma- 
terials furnished by the wilderness, relying only 
upon their own brains, their strong muscles, and 



146 When America Was New 

the few necessary tools brought from the Old 
Country. 

In the southern colonies a man such as this 
settler would have had a very different career. 
With the same success, he would become a 
planter as the other became a farmer. He would 
have come, probably, as a young, man, either 
kidnapped by men who were always on the look- 
out to earn sums of money given them for send- 
ing apprentices to the colonies, or if needy he 
might have agreed to come and to work for a 
number of years in order to repay the cost of his 
passage. 

Arriving in America, let us say in the Virginia 
Colony, he would have found employment, 
probably, upon one of the great plantations. If 
he had been of the same worthy stock as McLen- 
nan, industry, good conduct, and economy, 
would in a few years make him his own master, 
and then he would secure a place as agent, over- 
seer, or clerk, and be able to lay up a little 
money, and become a land-owner for himself. 
The chances are that his children would rise 
higher than he had done ; they might even be 
sent home to be educated, and if they returned 
to the colonies, become fairly entitled to rank 
with the best people in Virginia. 



Making the Homestead 147 

Of course, in both cases we must not forget 
that there were men of a different stamp from 
these industrious, useful workers, and many of 
them found anything but prosperity in the new 
land. In the northern colonies it was very easy 
for such a man to become an idler, relying per- 
haps upon a little hunting and fishing for winning 
his daily bread and never advancing beyond the 
capacity to provide a bare shelter and living for 
himself and his family. Rum from the West 
Indies was plenty in those days, and drinking 
was almost universal ; and this certainly tended 
to keep those who had no ambition from 
rising in the world, whether they lived in the 
mild climate of Virgmia or the severer climate of 
New England. 

In the South the same easy-going type of man 
would be entirely satisfied if he could hold an in- 
ferior position in the service of some merchant 
or planter, and he would leave his children with 
a start in the world little better than his own. 

These two were the extreme types, and the 
average of the people were perhaps nearer to the 
better than to the worst of them. Coming from 
the Old World where they had little chance to 
better themselves, and finding a quick reward for 
hard work and saving in America, most of the 



148 When America Was New- 

colonists were able to see their children far better 
provided for than themselves. Even those who 
began only as hunters in the woods or fishermen 
on the sea, and along the lakes and the rivers, 
often secured in these callings enough to marry, 
settle down, and hve a less wandering Hfe. The 
woods or the sea were always near enough for 
the planters and farmers to find use for gun and 
rod. 

When the colonists traveled in the thicker for- 
ests, of course there was no way of going among 
the underbrush except as campers to-day go — 
on foot, or by means of canoes that can be lifted 
out of the rivers and carried, at " portages," from 
one stream to another. 

When the woodland roads became more open, 
men and women both usually traveled on horse- 
back, and, as they were used to doing in the Old 
Country, the women would sometimes ride on a 
" pillion," or cushion, prepared for them at the 
back of the saddle, holding on to the belt of the 
rider in front. 

Sometimes two men with a single horse would 
cover long distances more easily by the method 
of traveling known as " ride and tie." One man 
would mount the horse, and after riding for a 
short distance at good speed, would dismount, 



Making the Homestead 149 

tie the horse by the roadside, and go forward on 
foot. The second man coming up would mount 
the horse, pass his companion on the road, and 
after riding for a time, would dismount in turn 
and leave the tied horse for the other. In this 
way they both would travel much faster than 
either could go on foot, or the horse could carry 
double, and this because all three would have 
times of resting. 

The earliest wagons did not come until quite 
late in colonial history, except, perhaps, in the 
richer plantations of the South, where they were 
imported from England. In the lumber districts 
oxen were used for dragging great trees along 
the roads in winter, and also for carrying heavy 
loads in the rough ox-carts, or for dragging by 
means of the ox-chain the flat wooden " boats " 
upon which loads of stone or earth could be 
transported. 

The form of the houses in the more northern 
colonies was usually square, but, in order to let 
the snow slide easily from the roofs, these were 
high and steep. Another reason for the high 
roofs and square frame was to get as much inside 
room as possible with the least work and material. 
The chimneys were enormous, for in winter great 
logs were burned in roomy fireplaces day and 



150 When America Was New 

night. Attic and cellar and kitchen were all 
storerooms, in which were kept the vegetables, 
and herbs that would not go into the sheds 
and barns, the family clothing, furniture, and the 
thousand odds and ends of a household that must 
depend on itself, instead of running to shops. In 
the South houses were less made to keep out the 
weather, and so were different in shape and in 
arrangement — for much more of the time was 
passed outdoors. 

The farms and plantations at first were mere 
cleared spots, and close up to them came the 
forest and swamp lands. The earliest fences 
were the great tree-stumps and the rocks that 
were pushed aside to make farming land. Next 
split rails were used when animals were to be 
fenced in ; for wood was to be had everywhere 
for the taking, and only an axe and wedges 
were needed in rail-splitting — such as young 
Abraham Lincoln did in later years. There are 
still in New England plenty of farms that look 
much like those of the forefathers, except for the 
presence of the complicated machines the Yankee 
farmer now uses ; but where now are roads and 
cleared fields, there then were bridle paths and 
thick woods, streams crossed at fords, rude clear- 
ings here and there, full of fire-blackened stumps. 



Making the Homestead 151 

and only now and then a house or two in half a 
day's journey between settlements. 

The most valuable of all tools to the lonely 
settler was his axe ; without this he was helpless, 
although fire, as used by the Indian, enabled him 
to clear land for planting. But the axe enabled 
him to get timber from the woods, and this was 
the most important of the early exports. If it 
might be called a " tool," we might rank next 
his gun, for it was a necessity, not only for pro- 
tection, but also in getting food, and skins for 
clothing. 

Indoors, of first importance and valued ac- 
cordingly, were the cooking utensils, especially 
great kettles, and hardly second to them came 
the spinning-wheels for making thread and the 
loom for cloth. These things the settlers brought 
with them, or bought as soon as possible. 

As there was plenty of water-power mills, the 
machinery necessary for grinding corn or for 
sawing wood were among the earliest things 
imported, though the pestle and mortar and the 
axe took their places at the beginning. The 
spinning of thread was considered so important 
that the magistrates early began to consider ways 
of having boys and girls taught to spin, and 
ordered each family to have among its members 



152 When America Was New 

at least one spinner, under penalty of a fine. 
Consequently, clothing was soon made by the 
colonists, and within a few years began to be sent 
to foreign countries. 

Mills were built very early for making and 
dyeing cloth, though the making of thread was 
usually carried on in the settlers' homes. Wool 
could not be brought from England, as it was 
against the law, and as soon as the settlers began 
to raise sheep the law again interfered to prevent 
their sending woolen cloth home and interfering 
with England's great trade in wools. 

Leather was very plentiful, of course, in the 
colonies. Deerskins at first, and afterward the 
hides of cattle and sheep, were early made into 
boots, shoes, and leggins. Leather was used not 
only for shoes, but made into all sorts of clothing 
which was valued in those rough times because 
it would hardly wear out. It is said that even 
women's skirts and aprons were sometimes made 
of leather. 

The list of contrivances that were used in the 
home is almost endless. The ingenuity of men 
and women contrived mills for grinding corn by 
hand, windmills and watermills ; cornshellers, from 
the rude contrivance made by setting up a 



Making the Homestead 153 

shovel held between the knees, or fastening a 
long-handled frying-pan across a tub and scrap- 
ing the ears of corn against the iron, to the 
more elaborate machines consisting of wood set 
thick with nails, or with a steel edge that would 
pull the corn kernels from the cob. 

We have already spoken of the pots, and ovens, 
and some of the kitchen utensils, but have said 
nothing of the churn, which at first was in the 
old-fashioned style, a barrel like contrivance made 
of hooped staves in which a long-handled dasher 
would be worked up and down ; and afterward 
took the form of boxes turned over and over by 
a handle. Cheese-making also had its appliances 
— presses and baskets and forms in which the 
cheese could be shaped. 

A tool that we no longer see was a great pair 
of tongs with sharp knife-blades at the end for 
cutting up sugar, which in those days, and many 
years later, came in enormous cones that had to 
be cracked up into small lumps. 

Upon the farm were cider-mills, either worked 
by hand or by horse-power, and of course all 
sorts of agricultural implements, beginning with 
plows made of a crooked stick shod with iron, 
harrows built out of crossed sticks and sometimes 



154 When America Was New 

weighted at the top with stones, and the various 
forms of scythes, hoes, and rakes that do not 
seem old-fashioned simply because they have re- 
mained in use. 



CHAPTER VII 
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 

IN describing the life in the colonial towns we 
shall find that the name " town " in those 
days covered a great many communities, 
from a mere gathering of a few neighbors at a 
crossroads, to populous cities ; but there was not 
in those times the same difference between the 
town and the country community. Even in so 
big a place as New York after it was fairly well 
built up, we see by the regulations made that the 
city must have been much like a raw country 
town. 

The matters that troubled the magistrates were 
the disorderly behavior of the men who drank at 
the taverns and then wandered about the streets ; 
the great number of cattle, goats, and pigs that 
were not properly cared for and strayed upon the 
highways, to the great annoyance of passers-by ; 
and untidiness of the residents in disposing of the 
waste and refuse from their houses — which was 
often thrown out anywhere instead of being car- 
ried to the regular dumping-grounds which were 
provided within the city limits. 
155 



156 When America Was New 

Other troubles that called for the attention of 
the law-makers were the great desire of people 
who had no right to do so to '• preach and proph- 
esy," and the disorder that was caused at times 
of holiday making ; such for instance as during 
the planting of Maypoles, and the celebrating of 
New Year's and other holidays. Early laws for- 
bade the beating of drums and the treating of 
one another to strong drink by the roysterers. 
Another regulation to prevent too much drinking 
provided that the taverns should not serve their 
customers on Sunday afternoon, when there was 
preaching. 

From these regulations we may see how gen- 
eral was drinking, and also that the better people 
were beginning to see the harm that was done by 
it, though as yet there was no strong temperance 
feeling and the use of liquor was much more 
general among all classes than we can readily be- 
lieve. It was even thought not unbecoming that 
men of fashion should often drink to excess. 

In the larger settlements there were certain 
very important days. On market-days, for ex- 
ample, the people came from all the country 
around, bringing their produce and exposing 
them for sale in the open spaces where the town 
people came to trade and to gossip. The 



Manners and Customs 157 

marketing was usually done, not by servants, but 
by the families for themselves, and the gathering 
of sellers and buyers was a sight greatly enjoyed 
by visitors to the towns and cities. Thus one 
traveler speaks of seeing the young ladies come 
to market followed by servants bearing the 
market-basket to carry home their purchases. 

But though these scenes were considered 
bright, gay, and full of activity, there was, of 
course, nothing to compare with the throngs we 
may see at any time in any busy street of our 
cities. There was almost no traffic until a much 
later time, when wagons became common ; there 
were no carriages or public conveyances, and we 
may say, in short, that all passers-by were either 
afoot or on horseback. To these we have only 
to add the animals driven to market, and the city 
folk in their sprucer attire mmgling with the 
rougher country people, to have a picture of a 
gathering of town people in the colonial days. 

As we have already said, there was much more 
of bright color in the costumes, and also a 
greater variety of dress, than we see, the only 
persons whose costumes were governed by any 
fixed fashion being the town dwellers. 

As to the houses in towns, they were not 
greatly unlike those in small settlements to-day, 



158 When America Was New 

except that, since land was much cheaper, they 
were likely to be surrounded by gardens or or- 
chards, and, at the back, to have vegetable plots, 
so as to give a rural appearance that was then 
shared by even the bigger towns throughout the 
old country. London itself was still full of open 
spaces or of gardens where trees and flowers 
might be seen. 

We must, too, in picturing an old town re- 
member how much has since been done in 
changing the natural scenery. The rivers of that 
time, except around a few of the busiest harbors, 
had their natural irregular banks, where now they 
are built up and made square with stonework or 
piers. Trees were much more plentiful, not only 
in the surrounding country, but even along the 
streets themselves, and in private grounds. 

Among queer things we should note could we 
now see these old towns would be the great 
rarity of any separation of the sidewalks from the 
middle of the road ; and also the almost com- 
plete absence of signs ; for in those days readers 
were not common, and it was more usual to in- 
dicate a shop or a place of trade by some symbol 
or emblem than by lettered signs. Some traces 
of this custom still exist, such as the carved In- 
dians in front of cigar-stores, the great boots of 



Manners and Customs 159 

wood before shoe-shops, the large horseshoe sign 
at the blacksmith's, and, especially, the striped 
pole of the barber, which has lasted since the 
Middle Ages. Houses were not numbered, and 
in order to direct a stranger it was necessary to 
tell him that a wanted house would be found near 
a certain church, or " two turnings back of the 
tallow chandler's," or " opposite the town-pump." 

At night, of course, the streets were not lighted 
except in the larger places ; and even in these 
there was no better way of lighting than by 
hanging lanterns containing little oil lamps to 
cords stretched across the street or upon tall 
poles. 

Mrs. Earle^ points out that in New England the 
settlers who lived near one another were very 
hospitable until they had grown numerous 
enough to call themselves a town, and that then 
' their kindliness and unselfishness were likely to 
be limited to their own townspeople. This, she 
thinks, came from the little travel of the time, 
which kept towns separated from one another 
and made it hard to know about strangers. 
Therefore strangers were usually suspected, and 
if they came without introduction, were " warned 

»" Home Life in Colonial Days." 



l6o When America Was New 

out." This warning was held to prevent such a 
stranger from becoming a town-charge if he 
should prove to be an idler or a ne'er-do-well. 

But, further than this, there was even jealousy 
of newcomers who tried to buy property without 
the consent of the town authorities. She also 
tells us that this dislike of strangers did not 
exist in the southern colonies, where they were 
usually welcomed and made much of. It was 
only in later days, after the plantations began to 
be exhausted, that there came an end to this 
boundless welcome given to strangers. 

A reason that may help to explain the desire 
to keep out strangers m many towns was the 
fact that much land was owned in common, and 
so to admit a stranger was to let him into a sort 
of partnership in their pastures and herds. 

To care for this common town-property, each 
community had certain offices, such as the cow- 
herds, pound-keepers, fence-viewers and hay wards. 
Hog-reeves to take care of the swine, were elected 
until our own times ; and, indeed, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson was, for a joke, made the hog-reeve of 
Concord. In a great many towns it was not 
unusual to call the men together to do any heavy 
piece of work, such as clearing new land. 

All these little offices brought a certain dignity 



Manners and Customs 161 

to the men who held them, for in colonial days 
there was much importance attached to social 
classes. In the churches and in the colleges, at 
town meetings, and, indeed, wherever men gath- 
ered together, it was usual to classify the people 
according to a fixed scale in which each family 
knew its place and was jealous to keep it. 

Thus in the early days of the colleges the 
names of the students were put in the order fixed 
by their social standing. Pligh in the scale came 
the royal authorities, as representatives of the 
crown. The governor and his following would 
thus come first, but closely following them we 
find the different professions ; the clergy first, 
then the lawyers and doctors. It is very likely, 
however, that the officers of the army would 
outrank any of the professional men, unless it be 
the clergy ; but of course this would be because 
of their rank at home. Outside of this ranking 
according to position, and even more important, 
were the English aristocracy, of whom not many 
came to the colonies except as proprietors of 
lands or officials of the government. 

Of course where social classes were so im- 
portant it is evident that there was much au- 
thority in the hands of the leading men. We 
have seen that certain proprietors, like the Lords 



l62 When America Was New 

Baltimore in Maryland, and the great patroons 
in New Amsterdam, had almost royal power 
over the people whom they brought with them 
to America. In New England the power to 
control affairs was mainly in the hands of the 
men who governed the churches. Only by be- 
ing a church member did one obtain the right to 
be heard in regard to all matters of public in- 
terest ; and admission to membership in the 
churches was governed by the ministers and the 
elders of each congregation. 

These same men, too, were the magistrates. 
They did not hesitate to punish severely by send- 
ing to jail, whipping, putting into the pillory, 
branding or even by more cruel ways, those who 
did not keep the laws. It would make most un- 
pleasant reading to give a list of the punishments 
evil-doers had to suffer ; but the fashion of the 
time in England and on the Continent had been 
brought over to America, and the times were 
cruel. 

The pillory, for example, was an arrangement 
for fastening sometimes the feet and some- 
times the head and hands by locking them into 
holes in a board, and the person in the pillory 
had to submit helplessly to insults and to pelt- 
ings at the hands of the idlers and thoughtless 



Manners and Customs 163 

boys of the town. Women for the not uncom- 
mon offense of ** scolding " could be ducked, and 
for this purpose were tied in a chair at the end 
of a long pole and then lowered into the water. 
At other times the scold would have her tongue 
put for hours into a split stick. 

The same cruelty was shown in punishing 
children in the schools, where flogging was 
thought to be necessary, and children were often 
forced to stand in uncomfortable positions or 
otherwise made to suffer for the smallest offenses. 
Another punishment that was common was com- 
pelling men or women to wear placards indicat- 
ing of what offense they had been guilty. Thus 
we read of a drunkard who was compelled for 
several months to wear around his neck a great 
letter D. These were the milder forms of pun- 
ishment, and many were worse. 

In the South the governing bodies were made 
up of the more important men of the community, 
who met occasionally and made such laws as 
they needed, having full power except so far as 
they were kept in check by the authorities in 
England, whose interference amounted to very 
little and only applied to graver matters. 

The affairs of the Virginia Colony, for example, 
were controlled by the rich planters, and these, 



r64 When America Was New 

when they died, were succeeded by their eldest 
sons ; for their laws provided that these should 
inherit just as in England, and the Virginia law 
even allowed that an estate should be so left 
from eldest son to eldest son so that none of them 
could dispose of it. 

These Virginian rulers were known as *' bur- 
gesses." They were chosen from each county, 
and were accustomed to meet at the capital and 
make laws. These laws, it is true, had to be 
sent to the King for approval, but they remained 
in force unless disapproved by him. There was 
a governor appointed by the King, and he had a 
council selected from many of the most promi- 
nent Virginia famihes, each councilor being 
commissioned as a colonel in the army — to 
which fact, as Sydney Fisher points out, is prob- 
ably 'due the general use of the term, " Colonel," 
in Virginia as a complimentary title. 

The Virginians were royalists ; that is, they 
supported the King in the war between the 
Stuarts and the Puritans, and after the Restora- 
tion, Cromwell even sent a fleet across the sea to 
threaten Virginia, which he knew was opposed 
to his government. All trouble was avoided 
by a treaty of peace drawn up between the 
colonies and the English fleet, and under this 



Manners and Customs 165' 

treaty Virginia was left really free to carry on 
her own affairs in her own way. 

Although there was now and again some 
trouble with the royal governors, the Virginia 
Colony was always too strong to be subdued, 
and remained really independent even down to 
the time of the American Revolution. 

The only cases in which serious quarrels seems 
to have been avoided for a long time were in 
those colonies where a grant of land with full 
powers to govern it was made, such a settlement, 
for example, as Pennsylvania in the North and 
Maryland in the South. In payment of a debt, 
the King had granted to William Penn almost 
full power to make laws for Pennsylvania, re- 
serving only the right to put an end to any law 
during the first three years of its existence ; and 
this right, of course, amounted in practice to 
very httle. Penn himself, in his turn, gave to 
the colonists almost complete self-government, 
not even reserving as much power over their 
laws as the King had done. 

Very similar powers had been granted to the 
Calverts, the Lords Baltimore, and they in turn, 
either by their own wish or because it was found 
best, gave the power of governing almost entirely 
into the hands of the settlers themselves. 



l66 When America Was New 

There was one circumstance that had a very- 
great effect upon the question of how much 
power the English Crown should retain over its 
colonies in America, for it must be remembered 
that in those days the management of the colonies 
was entirely in the hands of the King and his 
ministers, rather than in that of the lawmakers 
of the home country. The trouble between the 
Commons of England and the Stuart kings had 
begun not long after the first settling in America, 
and by 1643 the great civil war that was to end 
in dethroning and beheading King Charles I 
divided all England into two hostile camps. 

During the seven years of fighting, the colonies 
were left to look out for themselves. After peace 
had come, it was the Puritans and the Inde- 
pendents who were in control. Therefore the 
ruhng powers in England were disposed to be 
very friendly to the colonists, or if not friendly 
to them, yet to believe that they ought to gov- 
ern themselves with little interference from at 
home. 

It was not until a whole generation after the 
beginning of the English civil war that a Stuart 
king came back to the throne and tried to carry 
out the old ideas about giving laws to the colonies 
in America. When this restored king, Charles 



Manners and Customs 167 

II, had leisure to think about it, he picked out a 
number of governors and sent them to America 
for the purpose of taking once more into his own 
hands the reins of government and of recovering 
the powers that had been lost during the exile of 
the Stuarts. 

There were, in fact, three main kinds of gov- 
ernment in the colonies. In the first case the 
colony was directly under control of the king, 
and was known as a " royal colony." He could 
make laws to suit himself, or could appoint men 
and give them power to make laws, and the only 
Hmit on his power was the same limit that applied 
to his power over Englishmen everywhere. 

The second kind of colony was governed un- 
der a charter, a paper which had been granted by 
the King and which pointed out the rules under 
which the colony must be conducted. 

The third kind of colony was known as " pro- 
prietary." In this case the land on which the 
colony was situated had been granted to an 
owner, or proprietor, and he was permitted to 
make the rules governing those dwelling therein. 
Out of the thirteen colonies, seven were royal, 
three each were governed by charter and by 
proprietors. 

As already stated, Pennsylvania and Maryland 



i68 When America Was New 

were proprietary colonies, and to these must be 
added Delaware, which was made out of territory 
granted to the Calverts. The three that were gov- 
erned by charter were Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and Rhode Island. New York had at first been 
granted to the Duke of York, as proprietor ; but 
when he came to the throne as James II the 
colony at once became a royal colony. New 
Jersey had been originally granted to proprietors, 
but was afterward bought by the King, and the 
same was the case with North and South 
Carolina. 

The power to enforce the law was usually in 
the hands of officers like sheriffs, who carried out 
the directions of the magistrates, but when the 
law-breakers were too many or too strong, of 
course the power of punishing was taken up by 
the men of the community, all of whom in so 
new a country were accustomed to handle fire- 
arms, either from experience in fighting the 
Indians or because they were hunters or sports- 
men. 

There were, even from the very beginning, 
men set apart for training the men of the colonies 
in arms ; and as the towns grew in size the men 
were formed into regular militia companies with 
officers of their own, usually elected. These 



Manners and Customs 169 

men did not have regular uniforms, nor were 
they all armed in the same way. But most of 
them had guns, and those who had not were 
armed as many of the English soldiers of the 
time were, with pikes, that is, poles tipped with a 
metal point. The guns were of course all loaded 
in the old-fashioned way, at the muzzle with a 
ramrod, the powder being carried in a powder- 
horn slung over the shoulder and the bullets be- 
ing often put into a patch of greased cloth, so as 
to prevent the escape of the gases. The earliest 
settlers used " match-locks," guns fired with a 
burning fuse, but later flint-locks came in, and 
remained in use during all the colonial time. 

But the soldiers of the colonies, though not 
well trained and greatly despised by the regular 
army, were best fitted for fighting in the New 
World where there were few regular battles, but 
the fighting consisted of skirmishing in the 
woods, each man looking out for himself and 
taking what shelter he could find. Even when it 
was necessary to attack an Indian stronghold — 
for the Indians long before the white men came 
used palisade forts around their towns — the fight- 
ing was not at all like that of the European 
soldiers. They had, usually, no cannon, and 
depended upon the use of fire or upon a 



lyo When America Was New 

bold charge to destroy or capture the Indian 
forts. 

During the time when trouble with the Indians 
was feared, it was very common to surround not 
only the more lonely houses, but even whole 
towns, with strong palisade fortresses. Where 
the neighbors were too few to build such a big 
stronghold they at least joined to make one 
strong blockhouse, so that they and their families 
could take refuge against an Indian attack. The 
blockhouse was made of very heavy square tim- 
bers, with thick, well-barred windows, narrow 
loopholes from which the settlers within could 
shoot. The upper story reached out over the 
lower, and had openings through which those 
above could shoot any enemies who tried to set 
fire to the logs or to beat in the door. 

In the stories of James Fenimore Cooper there 
is more than one account of the attack and de- 
fense of such a little fort, explaining how the 
Indians would try to set fire to it by shooting 
burning arrows into the walls or on the roof. 
These arrows carried a bunch of burning birch 
bark or other light stuff. Against this danger 
the settlers provided by covering the roof with 
raw hides or making it flat and filling it with 
earth ; and they also kept ready great tanks of 



Manners and Customs 171 

water, which, by means of gourds, could be flung 
upon the flames. 

A number of these old forts, or blockhouses, 
still stand in New England. 

Much of the colonial warfare was modeled on 
what had been learned from the Indians. Each 
man would carry his own provisions and the 
troops would march through the woods along 
the narrow paths under the leadership of a guide 
without keeping any regular order. The actual 
fighting was also like that of the Indians them- 
selves, being a sort of duel between pairs of white 
men and Indians and seldom coming to a hand- 
to-hand struggle, or a charge of many at a time. 

All this brought about an entirely new way of 
fighting, such as was not understood by the regu- 
lar soldiers sent from abroad, and was despised 
by them until they were forced to learn it by 
serious defeats at the hands of the French and 
Indians. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE INDOOR LIFE 

IN viewing the circumstances of the colonial 
famihes we may say of them, in general, 
that they lived usually in great comfort ex- 
cept for the severe cold of the winters. Some of 
their ways would have seemed very strange to 
us. Thus we are told that a breakfast might 
consist of rye bread, butter, buckwheat cakes, 
and pie ; dinner of salt pork, vegetables, and pie 
again. Pies were of course very popular in New 
England, and sometimes a stock was made at 
Thanksgiving and frozen to keep over winter. 
An old man, in speaking of his boyhood, winds 
up by saying : ♦' In the evening we visited, 
chatted, ate apples, drank cider, and told stories. 
On Sunday nights the boys went courting." 

The women's hands were seldom idle. Proba- 
bly during even the courting spoken of as a Sun- 
day night diversion the young woman did not sit 
with idle hands, but embroidered a lace veil or a 
muslin cap, or, if young enough, worked upon 
her sampler. This was a piece of hnen contain- 
ing a set of alphabets such as they used in mark- 
172 



The Indoor Life 173 

ing household linen, the name and age of the girl 
who worked it, and often a rude rhyme or some 
pious sentiment. 

The daughter of Myles Standish, for example, 
worked upon her sampler these lines : 

" Lora [Laura J Standish is my name. 

Lord, guide my heart that I may do thy will ; 
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill 
As will conduce to virtue void of shame, 
And I will give the glory to thy name." 

Sometimes the samplers contained pictures, but 
these were not common. 

In looking around an old colonial home, we 
should notice the herbs that hung from the raft- 
ers, beams, and walls ; the hour-glass upon the 
high mantel ; the flint-lock on nails above the 
fireplace, where it was kept free from rust ; the 
rows of candlesticks and the tray with snuffers 
that also stood upon the mantel. 

Thurlow Weed, as quoted in an article in the 
American Magazine nearly a dozen years ago, 
speaks of the hours of leisure by the fireside in 
winter time as being the most valuable time to 
the farmer's son. By the firelight, even though 
doing some handiwork, a boy could read with 
keen appetite the few books that came his way. 
" I remember," he tells us, " to have read a his- 



174 When America Was New 

tory of the French Revolution while tending sap- 
kettles in a sugar-camp. I remember also how 
happy I was to borrow the book after a two-mile 
tramp through the snow, shoeless." 

From the same article we take a list of the 
baptismal names given in a single family, un- 
doubtedly a Puritan one. For those times the 
family was not large, consisting of only nine 
children, who were named as follows : Experience, 
Waitstill, Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, 
Unite, Desire, and Supply. But with the down- 
fall of the stricter Puritanism these names began 
to be disused, and even the Biblical names that 
lasted longer, are now kept up mainly where the 
memory of some ancestor is to be honored. 

It is often said that in old times the hours for 
meals were very different from our own, and that 
dinner, for example, has changed from being a 
forenoon meal to one that is taken all the way 
from noon until late in the evening. But this 
does not come from any mysterious cause. When 
the Hghting of the house was poor, and the peo- 
ple of the household worked hard from early 
dawn until nightfall, they naturally divided their 
day differently. The farmer who goes afield at 
four or five o'clock in a summer morning needs 
a substantial meal at least as early as noon, and 








^^^^^^l^;^ 





The Indoor Life 17^ 

is quite ready for bed soon after sundown. So 
long as such conditions remained, the custom of 
taking an early dinner of course was followed, 
and most sensibly. Under the same conditions 
we should adopt the same rules. 

We have not space to tell at length the story 
of the strict New England Sabbath. It began at 
sundown on Saturday night, ending at the same 
hour on Sunday night, and was strictly observed 
in a way to make everybody miserable. The 
only excitement that relieved the solemn hours 
was church-going, of which we quote an excellent 
little account credited by the American Magazine 
to Harriet Beecher Stowe : 

" To my childish eyes our meeting house was 
fashioned on the model of Noah's ark and Solo- 
mon's Temple. Its double rows of windows, of 
which I knew the number by heart ; its doors, 
with great wooden quirks over them ; its belfry, 
projecting out at the east end ; its steeple and 
bell, all inspired as much sense of the sublime as 
Strasburg Cathedral itself. How magnificent to 
my eyes seemed the turnip-like canopy that hung 
over the minister's head, hooked by a long iron 
rod to the wall above. How I wondered at the 
panels on either side of the pulpit, carved and 
painted as a flaming red tulip. The area of the 



176 When America Was New 

house was divided into large square pews, finished 
with a balustrade ten inches high. Through 
these loopholes the children could watch each 
other and report discoveries." 

From a story of old times we learn with what 
delight the children greeted the setting of the sun 
on Sunday night, rushing into the roads with 
cries of delight and plunging immediately into 
the games that had been forbidden. 

Sydney Fisher * speaks of Virginia and its con- 
ditions of life as being such as at the present time 
are not thought to be those that lead to 
prosperity or making a people great. He says : 
" There were no manufacturing industries, no 
merchants or tradesmen, few mechanics except 
of the rudest sort, no money except tobacco, 
and all the methods of exchange and business 
were cumbersome and slow." The land would 
have produced iron, indigo, lumber and beef, but 
all these sources of wealth were neglected. 

There were few schools, and no communities 
where many people were brought together ; and 
yet the Virginians, he says, became the most 
high-spirited, independent, capable men in 
America, the leaders of the Revolution, makers 
of the Constitution, and the statesmen of the 

> " Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times." 



The Indoor Life \nn 

country. This result he explains by saying that 
outdoor life gave these men health, the carrying 
on of their great farms gave them ability to 
direct affairs, and the leisure they enjoyed gave 
them time for reading and for thought. 

A thing that made the matter of clothes most 
important in the old days was the fact that 
clothes were a sign of social rank. The lower 
orders were forbidden to wear the richer fabrics 
and the ornaments of dress such as lace and 
jewelry. The wig also was generally worn by 
those who were entitled to be considered gentle- 
men, and the right to wear it depended upon 
one's birth and family. In general we may say 
that the richer colonists tried hard to follow the 
English fashions of the time, and that the Vir- 
ginian cavaliers followed the court fashions and 
the New England Puritans the Roundhead ways 
in England. 

The fashion of wearing the hair, for both men 
and women, was elaborate, and even sailors and 
soldiers wore their queues and pigtails. But of 
course these matters of fashion did not come up 
until after the plain days of the first settlers, 

whose dress had to be simple and serviceable 

which accounts for their frequent wearing of 
leather, already spoken of. 



lyS When America Was New 

The members of pioneer famihes made great 
use of skins of animals, making hats and caps 
and coats out of raccoon skins, bear skins, and 
especially the skin of the deer. We see a similar 
costume worn to-day by hunters of the west, 
whose garments of fringed buckskin are yet 
familiar to us in pictures. In the woods, where 
brush was to be met with, leggins had to be worn 
in order to prevent the trousers being torn to 
pieces or ruined by mud. 

Country people wore homespun, and were 
very fond of bright colors given by home-made 
dyes. A garment that countrymen were fond 
of and that has gone entirely out, was a 
sort of wide trousers reaching a little below the 
knee and being much like the Scottish kilt, ex- 
cept that there was a place for each leg. These 
men, too, were the first to wear long trousers in- 
stead of the more fashionable knee-breeches, silk 
or woolen stockings, with metal buckles at the 
knee and on the shoes. 

The dress of the Virginia gentlemen was hand- 
some and dignified. The coats were long-skirted, 
waistcoats often of rich fabrics ; they were ruffles 
and lace, short breeches, silk stockings, buckled 
shoes, and, for riding, long boots, often with large 
tops so they could be pulled well up over the 



The Indoor Life 170 

leg. In rough or rainy weather they wrapped 
themselves in great cloaks. 

The dress of the poorer men was similar in 
shape, though naturally of coarser materials. 
Both men and women delighted in bright colors, 
as was fashionable in England at the time. The 
women dressed expensively, even extravagantly, 
in hats made of beaver, silk and flowered gowns, 
bright scarlet cloaks and rich lace, all displayed 
at church on Sunday and in the many social 
gatherings. 

Edward Eggleston says, in brief, that " life in 
the colonies was simply the life of Europe of the 
eighteenth century made small by reflection in 
the provincial mirror " ; and the same assertion 
may be made of the seventeenth century except 
for such changes as life in the wilderness made 
necessary. 

The chief things to note are the fondness of 
the people for bright colors and the wearing of 
ornaments by all those who could afford either 
jewelry or its imitation. The women's wardrobe 
included many articles no longer needed because 
the houses are better warmed and there is less 
exposure to the weather outdoors. Great hoods, 
thick mittens, heavy wadded capes, and a multi- 
plicity of skirts, had to be worn in those days 



l8o When America Was New 

during the winter. The men, too, went about 
armored by thick dress against the winter's cold. 

The cut of garments was not such as to fit 
very accurately, and it was a common thing to 
hand down clothing for more than one genera- 
tion. Certain articles, of course, such as moc- 
casins, were adopted from the Indians, especially 
by those who lived a similar life. In the men's 
dress we must not forget the shot-pouches, the 
powder-horns, the swords and the guns, that 
made the hunters and the gentlemen picturesque. 

The unpaved streets made heavy footwear 
common, and instead of boots, the women had 
clogs, or rough foot coverings, to go over the 
shoes, or iron pattens to lift the foot above the 
mire. 

The clothing of the children of the better 
classes was in -miniature the same as their 
parents', and little boys in skirted coats, long 
waistcoats, and ruffles, and little girls with wide 
petticoats, straight bodices, and tiny hoods and 
capes like those of their mothers, sat with their 
parents in the high pews of the meeting-houses. 
In general, while of excellent material, the 
clothes of colonial times were far from being 
well fitted, graceful, or finished with the neatness 
to which we are accustomed. 



The Indoor Life l8l 

As to the food supply, it has already been ex- 
plained how abundant it was, as soon as the 
colonists had learned to use what the country 
gave them. 

Mrs. Earle^ tells us that in few things have 
ways so changed as in the serving of meals. 
The old pioneer table was a narrow board laid 
upon trestles and covered by a " board-cloth." 
For this purpose the smoothed boards were used, 
packing-cases from England being saved because 
they were smoother than boards could be made 
in the colonies, where there were no planing- 
mills. There was plenty of table linen, and par- 
ticularly of napkins, for much of the food was 
taken with the fingers, the first fork coming to 
America for Governor Winthrop in 1633. In 
the middle of the table stood a large salt-dish, 
and along the sides were set cups for drinking, 
spoons and knives, and great slabs of wood 
slightly hollowed out, instead of plates. These 
were the trenchers, and were used just as plates 
are to-day, though they were rare enough to 
make it common for more than one person to 
use a single trencher. 

In the scarcity of earthenware many things be- 
sides plates were made of wood, even bottles and 
*" Home Life in Colonial Times." 



i82 When America Was* New 

drinking-cups. Instead of pitchers were often 
used httle casks made and hooped Hke barrels. 
Some families had large platters made of pew- 
ter, and these were scoured bright and put upon 
the kitchen dresser, as silver might be exhibited 
on a modern sideboard. 

Much of the food was served in soups, stews 
and hashes, and could be eaten with spoons. 
The spoons also were made of wood and pewter, 
with a few of silver for the more luxurious, while 
the Indians made excellent spoons out of horn. 
Glass of all kinds was at first an extreme rarity 
in America, and even crudely made bottles were 
valued highly. Its place was taken at times for 
drinking-cups and bottles by cups made of 
leather and jugs of the same material. Horn 
cups were also not uncommon, and gourds could 
be made not only into drinking-cups but into 
dippers and scoops. 

Of course there were a few rich people who 
were able to import from England china and 
glass and to furnish their tables richly with silver, 
but we are telling of the ordinary colonist house- 
hold. 

On each side of the narrow tables we have 
described were long benches, and only the elders 
sat, even on these uncomfortable backless seats. 



The Indoor Life 183 

the children often having to stand throughout 
the meal. Dinners were not served in courses, 
but everything was put on the table at once, and, 
according to Mrs. Earle, the pudding, when it 
was served, was the first thing on the bill of fare. 
In the better houses there was considerable 
form and style m the serving of meals, but among 
the poorer sometimes a meal consisted simply of 
putting a great dish of food in the centre of the 
table and letting each one of the company help 
himself from the same dish with a big spoon. 

In telling how a family entered the wilderness 
and built up its home, we have given a good idea 
of what passed for furniture in the rude cabins, 
mentioning the old settle as especially necessary 
before the big fireplaces. We have also told 
how, gaining a little time and increasing in skill 
with the axe, the furniture, though rude, became 
more than mere makeshifts ; and it has been said 
that for the housewife the most important part 
of her household goods was the loom and the 
spinning-wheels for making the family clothing. 
In speaking of the food and the table we have 
been led to telling something of the tableware and 
of the things used for cooking. The rest of the 
furniture used in colonial houses was mainly 
made up of articles for covering the floors, which 



184 When America Was New 

were very necessary in the unheated houses, and 
the room furniture that helped so much in the 
comfort of Hving. 

It will be understood, of course, that every 
scrap of cloth found its use and was saved to the 
smallest bit. Rags and remnants were put away 
until a stock of them was gathered, were then 
tied or sewed into long strips, and made into rugs, 
either by weaving or by braiding or by being 
sewed together. We still see in old houses the 
rug carpets made out of these strips, either by 
curling them around themselves in a flat spiral 
and sewing the edges together, or by braiding 
them into strips joined in the same way ; or, when 
they were thin enough, weaving them into a 
rough fabric that not only wore well, but had a 
very artistic effect because of the rich pattern 
made by the contrasting colors. Pieces of silk 
gave material for quilts, and part of the artistic 
taste of the women went to the devising of 
curious patterns for putting together the little 
patches to produce striking results. Many of 
these patterns became very popular and were, as a 
favor, shown by one housewife to another. 

The bedsteads were very often provided with 
high posts at the corners, since it was almost 
necessary that the sleepers should be protected 



The Indoor Life 185 

from the cold rooms by heavy curtains hanging 
from a frame that could be drawn around them. 
Such bedsteads were used in the old country for 
the same reason, and were sometimes very 
elaborately carved. 

The furniture- makers of about that time were 
very skilful workmen, through lifelong practice 
at handwork and because during their apprentice- 
ship they had learned to copy the best models in 
old furniture as handed down for ages. Things 
were made to last, and those forms that lasted 
the longest were apt to be followed as good mod- 
els. Besides, in the old countries, where wood 
was not plentiful, that form of table or chair 
which made the best use of the least material 
would be chosen by cabinet-makers. 

Most of the pieces that went to the making up 
of the old furniture were hand-shaped, the only 
machine tool that was in common use being the 
turning-lathe. Consequently there was no need 
to choose for furniture forms that could be easily 
made in great numbers by machines — a thing 
that has done away with many of the best 
patterns. 

The chests of drawers, cabinets and other 
places for putting things away, were usually set 
upon tall legs, so that the housewife might be 



i86 When America Was New 

sure that the space beneath could be kept clean. 
It was not at all unusual in those days when few 
families could possess many pieces of furniture, 
to make one that combined several uses. A 
good example was the old-fashioned secretary. 
This, in one piece of furniture, combined a chest 
of drawers, atop of which came a writing-desk 
with a lid that opened out to make a writing sur- 
face, thus showing a set of pigeon-holes and 
small drawers, and above this came a few shelves, 
enough to hold all the books then hkely to be in 
any household. 

A tall, flat piece of furniture was a set of 
shelves for the kitchen or dining-room which en- 
abled the housewife to put on view her stock of 
brightly-scoured pewter. Another thing valued 
by wives was an oaken chest, often carved, to 
serve for the storage of fine linen, while the stock 
•for daily use was kept in chests of drawers or 
linen-presses — cupboards with shelves. 

Clocks of course were rare at first, and found 
only in the better homes, the poorer people depend- 
ing upon sun dials or upon a noon-mark — a mark 
made where the sun cast a shadow on some door- 
way or window or post just at noon. Other orna- 
mental pieces of furniture were the fire-irons and 
andirons that made grand the principal fireplace. 



The Indoor Life 187 

In the ruder homes for Hght in the evening 
they depended upon their great wood-fires or 
used pine knots or torches. The pitch-pine 
knots burned so clearly that they were commonly 
called candlewood, which was saved carefully for 
lighting. Of course the greatest use of these pine 
knots was in the South, but they were also fre- 
quent even so farth north as Maine. 

At first there was no tallow to make candles, 
and even after domestic animals became com- 
moner the candles were expensive and were used 
with great care. The making of the candles at 
home was hard work. The tallow was melted in 
great kettles and then bits of wick of hemp, tow, 
or cotton (and sometimes even the down of 
milkweed) were tied to long sticks so that they 
could be lowered into the melted tallow. When 
the tallow had hardened on them, they were 
dipped once more, and thus gradually the dipped 
candles became thick enough to use. By using 
two kettles the housewife could always have one 
heating while the other could be used for dip- 
ping. At a little later date the melted tallow was 
poured into hollow tin forms, or moulds, the 
wick being suspended in the middle, and' this 
made the moulded candle. Sometimes men trav- 
eled about with these moulds, making candles for 



l88 When America Was New 

different families. Wax candles were made after 
the farmers began to keep honey bees. 

Substitutes were made by dipping the pith of 
rushes into grease, forming rushlights, or by 
moulding candles out of the berries of the bay- 
berry bush. These last were much valued be- 
cause of the pleasant odor they gave when burn- 
ing. The bayberry candles were more costly 
than tallow, did not bend so easily, and burned 
slowly. The bayberry bushes grew everywhere, 
and the berries were often gathered by children. 

When the colonists had learned to capture 
whales, which, in the early days were found not 
seldom even off the shores of Long Island, they 
secured two excellent materials for lighting. The 
whale oil could be burned in lamps, and was used 
universally until the cheaper kerosene came in, 
and the spermaceti taken from the head of the 
whale made very superior candles. 

Housewives made the most of the expensive 
candles, carefully using them to the last bit in a 
little wire frame called a " save-all." 

In the better class houses candlesticks were of 
pewter or silver, but they were used in every 
form, even to a simple chandelier of crossed sticks 
at the ends of which were sharp nails to support 
the tallow-candles. 



The Indoor Life 189 

Lamps at first were like those of the old Roman 
days— shallow dishes with a spout — but after- 
ward became very elaborate, and ordinarily they 
were used without chimneys, though sometimes 
covered with glass shades to keep the flame from 
the draft. Glass lamps took the place of pewter 
as that metal became rare, and in form were much 
hke the lamps to-day. When they used whale 
oil they did not need chimneys to make them 
burn clear. 

Getting a light was by no means a simple 
matter until very late in the country's history. 
The fire once started was carefully kept alive by 
being buried deep in the ashes, so as to burn 
slowly. If it went out there might be no way 
to light it again except by sending to neighbors 
for a coal of fire, which was brought back in 
ashes on a shovel, in a pan, or on a bit of bark. 
This, in some places, was easier than to strike a 
light with flint and steel, but nearly all pioneers 
had these together with a box of tinder, which 
was made of charred linen, sometimes rubbed 
with gunpowder, or was a bit of dry vegetable 
fibre, moss, or a fungus. The Indians used a 
tinder made of a fungus on the birch trees, and 
such secrets as these the colonists learned from 
them. After the fire was once struck, sticks 



igo When America Was New 

dipped in sulphur were held against it, and this 
gave the flame. The first friction matches, even 
in their expensive form, were not known until 
the early part of the nineteenth century, about 
1827, and, according to Mrs. Earle, eighty-four 
of them cost twenty-five cents. 

For warmth the chief dependence was the 
kitchen fireplace, so big that it was really a 
room in itself and was supplied with logs that 
sometimes had to be drawn in by a horse. Within 
the chimney-place benches were sometimes put. 
Over the big log-fire cooking was done by hang- 
ing kettles and pots upon long chains. Within 
the bricks that enclosed the front of the fireplace 
were ovens that could be heated by being filled 
with live coals. After these had remained long 
enough to give a hot oven, they were drawn out, 
the pans put in, and the door closed, so that the 
cooking was done by the heat retained in the 
bricks. 

The big kettles were rather expensive, and 
formed part of the housewife's treasures. 

A device much valued for baking was the so- 
called " Dutch oven." This was a device of 
sheet iron or tin, open on one side, and could be 
stood so as to face the fire. Another contrivance 
sometimes called a Dutch oven was a big kettle 



The Indoor Life 191 

with long legs to keep it out of the deep ashes, 
and having a cover like a deep pan. It was put 
among the coals and coals were also heaped on 
top of the hollow cover, so that it was heated 
above and below. In such a kettle a great heat 
could be kept up for a long time. 

Almost all the cooking things had to have 
long handles, for the heat of the fires kept the 
cook at a distance. For roasting meat various 
methods were used, the simplest being to hang 
it from a string so that it could be turned con- 
stantly before the flames. An improvement was 
the •* roasting-jack," which was a chain that some- 
times had clockwork to keep the meat turning. 

It has been said that the kitchen fire was the 
main reliance for heating, and it can be imagined 
how cold the unheated houses became in winter. 
Old diaries speak of the ink freezing upon the 
pens of their writers. The bedrooms were icy, 
and could not have been slept in except for the 
beds, which had heavy curtains, warm coverings, 
and were sometimes heated by means of the 
warming-pan, a deep pan for containing hot 
coals and having a long handle by which it 
could be thrust under the coverings to remove 
the icy chill. 



CHAPTER IX 

WHAT THE COLONISTS KNEW AND 
THOUGHT 

WHEN we are told that the men who 
came with their famiHes to America 
went out from England soon after the 
great age of Queen Elizabeth, we must not be 
led by that to think that these men had anything 
of the brightness of mind and the wide, if curi- 
ous, learning, that belonged to the upper classes, 
to such men as Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, 
Sir Francis Drake, and Lord Burleigh, who was 
for so many years the Queen's most trusted ad- 
viser, or even the knowledge that went to make 
the many lesser dramatists of the time. 

These men had learning, wisdom, and knowl- 
edge of the world, but, for the most part, the 
colonists came from the lower classes. Even 
where they called themselves gentlemen, they 
were not educated, or readers, who knew much 
about the world or the learning of the time. 
They were, it is true, familiar with such wisdom 
of the day as came into popular speech. They 
knew the current sayings and proverbs, the 
192 



What the Colonists Knew 193 

stories and ballads of the time, and, if they came 
from cities, they had general ideas about such 
subjects as came up in general conversation. In 
this way they had learned something of the great 
voyages of the time, something of the wealth 
that was taken by Spain out of the mines of 
South America and the West Indies, something 
of the great countries of Asia, but only by hear- 
say, and usually through the wonder tales of 
travelers. 

One thing, as Edward Eggleston reminds us, 
in which nearly all the men of the time, both 
learned and ignorant, had some knowledge and 
more superstition, was astronomy. Upon this 
subject nearly all the world of the day still be- 
lieved in what is known as the " system of 
Ptolemy," that is, they thought that the whole 
universe that they could see revolved about this 
world as a centre. The sun, the moon, the stars, 
were fixed in great crystal globes or spheres, one 
within another, and turning in various ways about 
the central earth so as to carry with them the 
heavenly bodies, set in them like jewels in a ring. 

It is true that learned men here and there had 
begun to doubt this system, which had come 
down for many ages ; and these men had begun 
to believe the system of Copernicus, which was 



194 When America Was New 

much nearer the truth in making the sun the 
centre of our system, and in understanding that 
many movements of the heavenly bodies came 
from the spinning of the earth. 

But besides the mistaken idea about the make- 
up of the universe, there were fixed in the popu- 
lar mind many behefs that had come from the 
old astrologists — those men who thought that all 
human affairs were governed and ruled by the 
motion of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. It 
is hard for us to understand how general this be- 
lief was. It was accepted by men of great abil- 
ity who kept in their employ private astrologers 
who let them know whether or not any under- 
taking would be entered upon with any chance 
of success more at one time than at another. 

Besides this special study of astrology, there 
had come to be among the common people a 
number of absurd notions connected with it, and 
the ruling power of the heavenly bodies was 
borne in mind in most of their occupations. 
Certain things like planting of seeds, must be 
done at the full moon, certain others like prun- 
ing at the waning of the moon ; some days were 
lucky on account of the appearance of the 
heavens, and others for the same reason foretold 
disaster. 



What the Colonists Knew 195 

Such ideas are now almost dead, except for a 
few odd notions surviving here and there among 
the ignorant, such, for instance, as that there will 
not be a settled change in the weather until there 
be a change in the moon ; or that serious harm 
will come to one who sleeps so that the moon 
shines upon him. But the beliefs about luck or 
of charms that survive to-day are considered 
lightly and rather as a subject for joking than as 
serious matters. But all during colonial times 
these ideas largely ruled men's affairs. 

Among these notions those in regard to 
comets were particularly wide-spread. It was be- 
lieved that the appearance of comets in the sky 
always betokened some great event. Whether 
this event were fortunate or otherwise depended 
upon men's ideas of what was signified by the 
shape of the comet during its appearance. 

Another idea that was most wide-spread and 
faithfully believed related to the origin of insect 
and similar life. This was not confined entirely 
to ignorant people, though most general among 
them. It would be difficult to give examples of 
all the various forms this notion took, but in 
general it may be expressed by saying that 
wherever there was decay of one form of life, it 
gave rise to another. Thus it was thought that 



196 When America Was New 

bees came from the decaying carcasses of ani- 
mals, and frogs and insects of various sorts were 
supposed to be produced by pond slime and de- 
caying vegetable matter. 

Such beliefs as these were not, of course, very 
important as affecting men's actions at the time, 
but they showed how little knowledge of the 
world about them was possessed by the ordinary 
people. 

The general notions of natural history were no 
less foolish. Even fairly educated men, for ex- 
ample, believed that swallows at the end of the 
summer plunged to the bottom of rivers and 
streams and passed the winter buried in the mud. 
The whole subject of the southerly migration of 
birds was equally mysterious and gave rise to a 
great number of absurd theories. 

In attempting to imagine the nature of the 
powers that rule our world, the men of the early 
colonial times naturally enough imagined the 
powers above to be not altogether unlike the 
earthly powers they had known ; and since the 
society which they had known had been organ- 
ized by a strict division into classes in which all 
people were divided into an aristocracy and in- 
ferior orders, the colonists came to look upon the 
heavenly powers as divided in the same way. 



What the Colonists Knew 197 

They thought of the Creator as being a king, or 
great ruler, such as they had seen at the head of 
the states from which they had come. And as 
the earthly kings were attended by throngs of 
courtiers, so it was believed that the Creator had 
his great foUowings of inferior beings who yet 
were superior to man and who held toward him 
the same relation that the courtiers held toward 
their king. 

Nor was it the heavenly powers alone that 
were considered to be divided thus. The great 
Adversary, Satan, was likewise believed to be, 
in a way, the monarch of an enormous kingdom 
made up of inferior devils and demons who 
served in his train and were ready to carry out 
his mischief-making schemes. 

This belief as regards the devil and his minis- 
ters led to real evils, for it is to this belief that we 
must trace the terrible witchcraft delusion which 
was once so widely extended in England and 
which came across the sea to the colonies and 
was the cause of cruelties almost innumerable. 

Unable to account for the strange illnesses, 
mental or physical, that occasionally seize upon 
mankind, or the occasional diseases that affected 
their animals, it was very natural for the believ- 
ers in the great power of Satan and his inferior 



igS When America Was New 

demons to lay the evil doings to these ministers 
of evil and to human beings under their control. 

It is impossible to give any idea of the many 
varied shapes which the witchcraft delusion took, 
but it may be said, in general, that the process 
in seeking out a cause for ailing children, a 
series of disasters, or, in short, any unexplained 
series of accidents, particularly if they affected a 
single person, was to select some victim, perhaps 
oftenest an ill-natured old woman who may have 
spoken hastily and malevolently against a neigh- 
bor, and then to accuse the poor creature of 
witchcraft. 

Against such a charge, defense was almost im- 
possible, and those who would have been inclined 
to defend the victim were in many cases fright- 
ened away by the fear of being involved in her 
fate. The leading men of the communities, the 
clergymen, the magistrates, the rulers, were, for 
the most part affected by the same superstition as 
the most ignorant of their people. And even 
where they were in doubt it was dangerous for 
them to express their doubt for fear of being ac- 
cused of impiety. 

The argument that was used to prove witch- 
craft was the same that supported the institutions 
for which men had the most reverence. The be- 



What the Colonists Knew 199 

lievers in the delusion would point triumphantly 
to the mention of witches in the Bible, citing the 
case of Saul's visit to the witch of Endor and 
quoting the text of the Old Testament that de- 
clares *' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 

In the face of such authorities, and at a time 
when no one dared, for fear of the awful charge 
of heresy, to dispute what seemed to be plainly 
asserted by any of the countless texts that might 
be quoted from the Scriptures, there was no pos- 
sibility of fighting against the universal sentiment 
back of the witchcraft persecutions. To deny 
that there were witches, to claim that the ac- 
cused ought not be put to death, was to lay one's 
self open to the charge not only of heresy, but 
even of treason both to Church and to State. 
The King and all the constituted authorities 
claimed power over their fellows by virtue of 
Scriptural authority. The church itself, which, 
in those days was second only to the King, if 
even to him, likewise rested upon the same 
Scriptural foundation. Such being the case, it 
was impossible in the face of public sentiment to 
rescue from trial the poor creatures suspected of 
witchcraft, and in the trials themselves there was 
little chance of escape. 

It is well known to lawyers and others who 



200 When America Was New 

have studied the history of criminal law, that the 
persons accused of crimes, particularly after the 
cruelties of torture, or when weakened and 
driven half crazy by the severities of the old 
prisons, and confronted by a crowd of accusers 
all of whom had lost their feehngs of kindly 
humanity through their superstitious fear — are 
really out of their minds. It is impossible to 
foretell what lies or absurdities such persons will 
say. Many of the law books contain cases, par- 
ticularly in these witch-trials, where the poor 
creatures driven out of their senses, have made 
long and elaborate confessions which we now 
know must have been no more than nightmare 
dreams of their tortured brains. 

The only thing that put an end to this terrible 
state of affairs was the fright of the more sensible 
members of the community at the enormous 
growth of the delusion. It soon came to be 
impossible to say who would be free of accusa- 
tions of witchcraft. No one was safe, even if of 
the highest standing and the best character. It 
was felt that the horrible trials and executions 
must be stopped, and to this feeling alone is due 
the end of the witchcraft delusions. 

While no other superstition resulted in so 
much evil, yet there were many quite as difficult 



What the Colonists Knew 2oi 

for us to understand as the belief in witches. 
There was thought to be a whole train of sprites, 
demons, hobgoblins, and similar creatures, whose 
existence was not doubted by the ignorant and 
who made many unhappy people miserable by 
their imagined doings. The belief, for example, 
in haunted houses was a natural result of this 
feeling that the air was full of evil spirits and the 
ghosts of the departed. Those who were 
mentally lacking were believed to be possessed by 
devils, and from the knots in the tangled manes 
of horses to the blighting of a crop of grain, the 
doings of these enemies of mankind were be- 
lieved to be endless. In many cases they were 
thought to be the causes of disease, and of 
death. 

The amount of medical knowledge in England 
during the colonial time was no guide to the 
amount of knowledge possessed by those who 
cared for the sick in America. There were 
virtually no periodicals, there was no body of 
educated men, and no medical books, that could 
give the colonial practicer of medicine any true 
knowledge of the healing art. 

The men who in the absence of educated 
doctors were called upon to cure wounds, to heal 
fractures, and to care for the disabled generally. 



202 When America Was New 

usually were guided by a few old-wives' notions 
that had been handed down for nobody knows 
how many ages. Really educated doctors can 
hardly be said to have existed in the colonies, not 
because such men would not have found plenty 
to do, but because men who were thus skilled in 
their profession were far from plenty in the home 
country, and there was little to tempt them 
abroad. Consequently, those who practiced 
physic were the mothers of families, particularly 
the wives of owners of large estates, who, as in 
England, were expected to know the use of a few 
drugs, to be skilful in caring for small injuries, 
and to be handy in the sick-room ; next in im- 
portance to those were the barbers who had for 
many years been accustomed as part of their 
business to " let blood " that is, to bleed patients 
in order to cure them of fevers and a dozen other 
ailments that were supposed to come from the 
state of the humors of the body ; and, third, may 
be reckoned the clergymen, the teachers, and 
other educated men. 

The common beHef of the time about these 
humors of the bodies was that irregularities or ill- 
nesses and diseases came from there being too 
much or too little of one of " the four humors " 
of the body. As Eggleston gives them, " these 



What the Colonists Knew 203 

four humors were known as bile, or choler, blood, 
melancholy, or black, bile, and phlegm." 

It was easy to suppose that the simplest way 
of changing the amount of any one of these 
humors was to open a vein and let a little blood 
flow. And this was done in season and out of 
season, whether the person were well or ill, under 
a general idea that bleeding now and then was a 
good thing, and that in the case of the sick it 
must be beneficial. Even the well people were 
bled now and then to keep them in health. 

Besides the women and the barbers, and the 
others we have mentioned, there were people 
called " bone-setters " — men who had acquired, 
either by experience or by inheritance, some 
knowledge of the art of caring for broken bones, 
or putting dislocations in place. These men be- 
ing called upon in such cases, naturally came to 
consider themselves doctors, and often added to 
their practice some knowledge of the properties 
of common plants or gained from the Indians 
some hints in the use of herbs. 

In those days in the absence of any science 
of medicine, the common people would go with 
their troubles to anybody supposed to be wiser 
than his fellows and ask for advice, simply for the 
lack of knowing what better to do. In this way 



204 When America Was New 

clergymen especially were often called upon to 
treat the sick, and they also found themselves 
bound to learn something about the useful house- 
hold remedies and the commoner drugs. 

One curious notion entirely unknown to most 
of us to-day ruled almost universally in the 
medicine of two or three centuries ago. This 
notion was based upon two general ideas. The 
first was that when a person was sick, it was impos- 
sible he should get well unless some cure was ap- 
plied. This doctrine is one that is only too much 
believed in down to the present time, and the 
difference between their notion and ours is found 
in the fact that they believed that it was a marvel 
when a patient recovered from an illness without 
the help of some strange remedy, while we know 
that the best doctors and nurses can in most 
cases do no more than see that nature is not in- 
terfered with and that the strength and spirits of 
the patient are kept up. The people of colonial 
times looked upon the doctor or his American 
substitute as something of a magician who 
worked wonders by means of the secret magical 
properties of various substances of which he 
held the knowledge. 

The second notion that ruled the medical 
science of the time was the doctrine of '• signa- 



What the Colonists Knew 205 

tures." This proceeded from the behef that for 
every disease there was a remedy which had 
been created for the purpose of curing that 
trouble. The doctrine of signatures asserted 
that there was connected with the plant or other 
remedy a sign by which we might know what 
things were adapted to the curing of certain dis- 
orders. 

A common example that every one will appre- 
ciate is found in the plant " hepatica." In the 
old days, the fact that the leaf of the hepatica 
was believed in its shape to resemble the liver, 
and that the color of the under side of the leaf 
is also like that of the liver, would have been 
enough to establish its claim to be considered a 
cure for liver troubles. Whether such an herb 
was administered pounded in water, boiled in 
vinegar, stewed in wine, or applied as a poultice, 
would depend entirely upon whatever notion 
happened to hit the mind of the medical men. 
This resemblance between the plant and the liver 
was taken as the plant's " signature," or sign as 
to what it was created for — the notion being that 
everything must have been created for sorite 
purpose, and usually for some purpose connected 
with the good of mankind. 

Of course it is true that repeated trials of dif- 



2o6 When America Was New 

ferent herbs through all the course of the ages 
had taught men something, and even in these 
times some of the best known remedies still in 
use to-day were of recognized value. But, gen- 
erally speaking, much more dependence was to 
be placed upon the notion of " humors " (which, 
again to quote a statement made by Eggleston, 
might go wrong in *• eighty thousand ways "), and 
in the magical doctrine of signatures than even 
in carefully collected trials of the various drugs. 

There were at that time, of course, a few 
skilled doctors, even in the colonies, but these 
men were greatly hindered and confused by the 
claims of rival schools of medicine. There was, 
one might almost say, no true science at all, 
either of chem^istry or of medicine, and remedies 
of a purely magical nature were held in the same 
esteem as those that really had a claim to use- 
fulness. In the absence of any real knowledge 
of the body or how it was nourished, of the cir- 
culation of the blood and of the part played by 
the different organs, there could be no true 
science of medicine built up by the work of 
practitioners. 

Though we have given merely one instance of 
the complicated idea of signatures, it was really 
a great and elaborate system which had to do 



What the Colonists Knew 207 

with the influence of the planets upon minerals 
and plants, and also with a mysterious something 
which they called " sympathy," which (Eggleston 
suggests) may have been taken from some strange 
notion of the magical power of magnets. 

Together with the strange properties of plants, 
there was a strong belief in the good effect of 
prayers or magical sentences inscribed upon 
scraps of parchment and often carried about to 
ward off evils. It is said, in a note to Chapter 
II of Eggleston's " Transit of Civilization," that 
*• toothache was cured, in Boston, by giving a 
sealed piece of paper on which was written a 
prayer, beginning, • In the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, preserve thy servant,' 
— and so on." 

The strange warty appearance of a toad's back 
and the common belief that toads were poison- 
ous, was enough to convince people of the time 
that if toads were ground up and made into a 
powder, this powder would serve as a cure for 
eruptions of the skin and also would be an anti- 
dote against poisons. 

It can easily be seen that in medicine practiced 
upon such principles as these there is no end to 
the strange fancies that may give rise to belief in 
curious remedies. 



2o8 When America Was New 

This magical theory of medicine was even car- 
ried so far that it was believed a wound might be 
cured by applying a certain ointment, made of 
no matter what, to the blade of the sword or 
dagger that had done the injury. And in a simi- 
lar way sometimes attempts were made to remedy 
a bleeding by sprinkling some other magical 
powder upon the blood itself rather than on the 
wound. In this case the cure was believed to be 
brought about by " magnetism," '* a term," says 
Eggleston, " that has covered more ignorance 
than any other ever invented." 

In order to show the change in opinions, we 
quote from a recent medical paper opinions of 
some eminent medical men. 

From Sir John Forbes, who was physician to 
Queen Victoria, comes the statement : " Some 
patients get well with the aid of medicine, some 
without it, and still more in spite of it." From 
Dr. James Johnston, Fellow of the Royal Society 
of Great Britain, come these words : " I declare 
as my honest conviction, based upon long expe- 
rience and reflection, that if there was not a sin- 
gle physician or surgeon, chemist, apothecary, 
druggist or drug, upon the face of the earth, there 
would be less sickness, less mortality, than now 
prevail." From another Fellow of the Royal 



What the Colonists Knew 209 

Society, Francis Galton, we may take a proverb 
(which he quotes as a consolation to explorers 
who may have to go into countries far from 
medical aid) that " Though there is a great dif- 
ference between a good physician and a bad one, 
there is very little between a good one and none 
at all." 

It may be that these modern authorities are 
only trying to prevent too great a reliance upon 
medicine or distrust of nature ; but their opinions 
at least will show what a complete change of 
opinion has taken place between the days of the 
colonists and our own times. 

Among the curious drugs whose powers were 
believed in there is none to which the people of 
these days of the seventeenth century gave more 
importance than the so-called '* potable gold," 
which means " drinkable gold." Believing that 
in astrology the sun was the most powerful or 
potent of all the heavenly bodies, and believing 
also that there was the greatest sympathy between 
the sun and the metal astrologers thought be- 
longed to it — gold, they reached the wise con- 
clusion that if gold could be made to serve as a 
drug, its effect as a curer of all ills must exceed 
that of any other remedy. 

It is hardly worth while to run over even a list 



210 When America Was New 

of the more important things that were thought 
to be curative in effect. It is like reading ex- 
tracts from some pretended magician's book in 
an old fairy tale. For instance, there is the 
" bezoar-stone," which was supposed to be an 
antidote for all sorts of poisons and was believed 
to be found in the inside of a wild goat of the 
East. 

As no one knew exactly what the bezoar stone 
was like, and as different ones were said to differ 
in size, shape, and color, it is easy to see that al- 
most any odd stone could be palmed off upon the 
ignorant as a wonderful remedy. 

Like the bezoar stone, people regarded ser- 
pents' flesh as being excellent against poison ; 
and, indeed, remedies of some kind were made 
from nearly every part of every animal. Some 
of these drugs were made of substances even to 
read of which is disgusting. Perhaps one of the 
least unpleasant was a remedy for fever, which 
consisted in a dead spider shut mto a nutshell and 
worn about the neck against the skin. 

From the Indians was derived a great deal of 
nonsensical medical practice, together with a few 
really valuable hints ; and since it was natural in 
the colonists to believe that the Indians knowing 
nature so well, were likely to know the value and 



What the Colonists Knew 21 1 

the use of the unknown plants which were found 
in the New World, it soon became the custom 
for quacks and pretenders to claim that they had 
learned most valuable medical secrets from the 
Indians. Thus grew up a form of medicine prac- 
ticed by men who called themselves " Indian doc- 
tors " or •* botanical doctors." 

Even after some time had elapsed in the colo- 
nies there was no improvement in its doctoring. 
At first, when colonists were sent over, it was 
usual to send with them at least one man who 
had some knowledge of medicine ; and it became 
the custom for these men to train one or two as- 
sistants while in the New World. But after the 
colonists began to come in smaller parties, of 
their own motion, there was no longer a sufficient 
supply of skilled doctors from the home country, 
and people, as the colonists became more numer- 
ous, were compelled to rely upon the help that 
could be given by the pupils of the first medical 
men, and naturally enough, the training of these 
younger men had been very imperfect. The 
self-taught quacks and pretenders to medicine 
could not have had any good training, and yet 
they were bound to engage in active practice, 
owing to the great prevalence of accidents and 
illnesses in a people living under new condi- 



212 When America Was New 

tions and exposed to the dangers of the wilder^ 
ness. 

In judging the acts of people of colonial times 
it is not always fair to judge them as if we could 
understand their feelings. In our own days we 
have learned to trust much more in our reason 
and common sense than they ever thought of 
doing. Their first idea when in difficulty was to 
find some one to obey. 

In our own day we read, we question, and we 
talk over among ourselves, everything that is 
done. If we do not approve of the doings of 
our officers and magistrates, we blame them be- 
cause their ideas do not agree with what we 
think is right or just ; but in the colonial times 
people did not often claim the right to judge 
their betters. 

There seems to be little trace in the early days 
of the colonies of any love for the beautiful in 
nature. Few of the early settlers seem to have 
thought of the ocean, the shores, the great for- 
ests, and the meadows, as interesting or beautiful 
things. They were simply rough and trouble- 
some surroundings to be conquered and made 
tame and civilized. 

We find little trace of any care for nature, 
even in the writings of poets ; but this may pos- 



What the Colonists Knew 



213 



sibly have come from the fashion of the time, 
since a poet would not be likely to write what 
would be looked upon as foolish by those who 
were to read his lines. The age that had pro- 
duced the Elizabethan poets could not have been 
lacking in men or women able to see the beauties 
of nature, but if there were a few such, the fact 
that they have left no trace and that they are 
never appealed to by the writers of the time, 
shows that most of the settlers and early colo- 
nists could have taken no very strong interest in 
the wonders and beauties of the New World to 
which they had come across the seas. 

From the way in which the colonists were 
founded, North and South, it came about that 
the feeling toward the King and ruling powers 
in England was different in the two sections. 
At the South there was among the men of the 
higher classes much loyalty to the Crown, and 
even when for a time there was hard feeling 
toward their governors, this loyalty was hardly 
shaken. We have seen already that at the time 
of the Commonwealth in England it was thought 
necessary to send a fleet over to compel obe- 
dience to Cromwell's government. 

At the North the feeling was much less friendly 
toward England, since too many had been driven 



214 When America Was New 

across the sea by harsh treatment at home, and 
they were less friendly with the ruhng classes 
than the Virginians. The Puritan government 
in England for this reason was most friendly to 
the Northern colonies, and left them to look 
after themselves. This was changed again when 
the Stuarts came back to the throne. 

Toward foreign nations the general feeling of 
the time was that all foreigners were enemies, 
and the only thing that kept this from being 
universal was the fellow feeling of English Prot- 
estants toward the Dutch in their struggle with 
CathoHc Spain, and with the French Hugue- 
nots. The more distant nations at that time were 
thought of only as enemies to the Christian re- 
ligion, as pagans and infidels, who, as hostile to 
Christianity, were entitled to little or no consid- 
eration at the hands of Christian men. 

A similar belief of the colonists in regard to 
the Indians had much to do with the hatred that 
grew up between the two races. The people of 
that time, with their idea that the whole world 
was divided into two kinds of nations, or coun- 
tries : namely, those who were Christians and 
therefore were under the special care of God, and 
those who were pagans, or infidels, and so might 
be looked upon as enemies of the faith and as 



What the Colonists Knew 215 

foes to all that was good, seemed to think it no 
harm to misuse or maltreat the pagans, and cared 
little to keep faith with them. Their way of 
putting it was to say that the Indians worshiped 
the devil, and this they thought was proved by 
the strange doings of the Indian medicine men, 
the sorcerers, as they often called them. 

Again and again in the books of the time, and 
in the letters and journals, we come upon the 
statement that the Indians were wholly wicked, 
and were devil-worshipers. Thus they were 
classed with witches as enemies of mankind, best 
put out of the way as soon as possible, and 
entitled to no kindness. 

This feeUng on the part of many colonists was 
held even toward the Indian women and chil- 
dren. It is not meant that the better men and 
women in the colonies were either so ignorant 
or so cruel, but the feeling that the Indians were 
vermin was very general ; indeed, it may be said 
to have been the most general feeling in the 
colonies. 



CHAPTER X 
BOOKS, READING AND EDUCATION 

IF we were to give only the number of books 
that were brought over by early settlers, 
we should get a very wrong idea of the 
amount of reading and literature in the colonies. 
The libraries of the time were made up very 
largely of long and dull discussions upon relig- 
ious matters. Besides Bibles and Prayer-Books, 
there were a whole class of works meant to teach 
the living of a pious life, and these were spun out 
into dull and endless discussions of the duties of 
the Christian in every possible circumstance of 
daily life. 

The great plenty of works of this character 
may be explained by the fact that in those days 
nearly every form of education was devoted to a 
religious purpose. 

Gradually to colonial libraries were added 
books of general information, those that told 
farmers how to manage their land and crops, and 
treatises on various useful arts, and it was still 
later before we find anything in which we should 
216 



Books, Reading and Education 217 

take the slightest pleasure as books for reading. 
The masterpieces of Elizabethan literature, such 
as the works of Shakespeare or Bacon or Spenser, 
together with the Essays of Montaigne and books 
of this character, did not become at all common 
in America until after the Restoration in Eng- 
land had made people willing to read something 
besides the heavy books on the practice of piety 
and the great volumes of sermons on disputed 
points of theology. 

The first printing-press in America was five 
years in the Virginia Colony before any one 
came who was able to use it. A practical printer 
came over in 1620, but would print only what he 
liked, making a great deal of his importance. 
So a year or so later another was brought over 
and the first one was sold to pay his own debts, 
working as a hand on a plantation until his 
death. The second printer's work included only 
notices of the sailing of ships, the governor's or- 
ders, price-lists, and lists of servants sent to the 
plantation. It was not until a whole generation 
later that a press was brought to New England 
and used for printing Bible extracts and mission- 
ary leaflets. Soon after this the great coming of 
Puritans to New England began, and the print- 
ing art rapidly grew in importance with the 



2i8 When America Was New 

coming of these well-to-do and educated set- 
tlers. 

As to American authors in these early days, 
one might almost say there were none. It is 
true that a few of the early travelers, notably 
Captain Smith, had written books telling what 
they had done or seen in the New World, that a 
few clergymen had produced for themselves 
various theological works of which there were 
already too many, and that there had been a few 
versifiers such as Anne Bradstreet, who dared in 
a timid way to try her powers as a poet and be- 
came known as the " Tenth Muse lately sprung 
up in America." 

In running over the books called American 
between the time of John Smith's account of his 
adventures and the time of Cotton Mather, about 
the end of the seventeenth century, we find that 
almost every title might well be that of a sermon, 
the few exceptions being the books of travels of 
which we have spoken and some discussion of 
the rights of men under the laws. The poets 
may almost be numbered upon the fingers of one 
hand. Among them the first was Nathaniel 
Ward, author of " The Simple Cobbler of Aga- 
wam " ; then comes Anne Bradstreet, daughter 
of the Governor of Massachusetts, who is fol- 



Books, Reading and Education 219 

lowed by Michael Wigglesworth, author of a 
most terrible production that seemed to have 
been known throughout New England and was 
enough in itself to account for almost any amount 
of religious unhappiness. This poem was known 
as " The Day of Doom," being a poetical de- 
scription of the great and last judgment, and of 
course showed its greatest power in depicting the 
awful tortures of those who were condemned. 
For an example of this cheerful poem, here are a 
few lines addressed to the babes dying in in- 
fancy, and so condemned because of " Adam's 
fall": 

" You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect, 
Such you shall have, for I do save none but my own elect. 
Yet to compare your sin with theirs who liv'd a longer time, 
I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime. 
A crime it is, therefore, in bliss you may not hope to dwell ; 
But unto you I shall allow the easiest room in hell." 
The glorious king thus answering, they cease, and plead no 

longer, 
Their consciences must need confess his reasons are the 

stronger. 

After running over so dry and dull a list of 
books one may be excused for wondering 
whether there was in the colony anything but 
prigs and hypocrites. At all events, there could 
not have been any opportunity in these stricter 



220 When America Was New 

colonies for young persons to know about the 
brighter sides of hterature, whether at home or in 
school. 

Schools, for centuries, had been entirely 
for the purpose of fitting men to enter the 
Church or the religious bodies. A proof of this 
is seen in the old law that permitted a man to 
escape, when condemned to the gallows, by 
claiming the right to be handed over to the 
Church for judgment instead of being judged by 
the courts. To prove this right it was only 
necessary for the criminal to show that he could 
read, which was long accepted as a sufficient 
proof that he belonged to the Church people. 

After the closing of the monasteries and the 
breaking up of the schools connected with them, 
these were replaced by grammar schools, but the 
old notion that the purpose of schooling was to 
fit a boy to study the Scriptures remained for 
many a year. Consequently, it was supposed 
that most of those who cared for reading were 
interested, first, in the religious questions, and if 
they knew even the learned languages it was 
thought that these were of use mainly for the 
purpose of reading the Scriptures in the original 
or learned scientific books upon chemistry, as- 
trology, and so on. It was many a long year 



Books, Reading and Education 221 

before men dared confess that they cared for 
something besides serious reading. 

The chances for schooHng among the early set- 
tlers depended wholly on whether any of the peo- 
ple in the neighborhood where a settler happened 
to be had the time and learning to teach the 
young. To such home teaching later was added 
a little brief schooHng in the winter time, when 
children could be spared, and when there were 
a number of families together willing to board 
some young man or woman able to give the chil- 
dren their beginnings in reading. 

The first tiling used in school was known as 
the ♦* horn-book." This was a flat piece of wood 
ending in a handle and looking not unlike the 
wooden part of a square hair-brush. Upon this 
was put a printed sheet containing the alphabet 
and a few simple syllables followed by something 
in short words, such as a bit of moral verse, or 
the Lord's prayer, or the like. Over the paper 
was fastened a thin sheet of horn, so that the 
little fingers would not soil or tear the precious 
lesson-sheet. 

From this the child went at once to selections 
from the Psalms and to the Bible, or to some 
moral or religious work, for the idea that schools 
should teach moral maxims remained for many 



222 When America Was New 

years. It was not until toward the eighteenth 
century that primers were printed for children, 
and these were followed by Httle books teaching 
goodness and manners. Once the child cou Id read 
the Psalms, he went on, if he was to be further ed- 
ucated, to the Latin schools, for Latin, as Eggles- 
ton puts it, " was still the sacred language of re- 
hgion and learning." In these schools the main- 
study was the Latin grammar — Lilly's, the same 
Shakespeare is supposed to have used. This was 
wholly in Latin. It was the intention, too, for 
the pupils to talk only Latin in school hours, and 
the nickname of asinus, or donkey, and the ever- 
ready ruler awaited those who used their own 
language. 

Besides his Latin studies, the boy who was 
supposed to be well educated had to give great at- 
tention to learning to write, and for this purpose 
was taught to make his own quill-pens, to rule his 
own writing-books, and to do neat figuring. Be- 
sides the quill-pen they used a bit of lead set into 
a quill or other handle, which made a very poor 
sort of pencil. It was not until quite late in the 
history of the colonies that the growth of busi- 
ness made it necessary to teach boys more of 
their own language and something of arithmetic 
and bookkeeping. 



Books, Reading and Education 223 

School children of the present day can have 
no idea of how every scrap of paper was pre- 
served in the old times, when it was all made 
from rags instead of from wood-pulp. Many of 
the old pupils were glad to do their exercises 
upon smooth shingles, or to write their nicer ex- 
ercises upon odd bits of paper saved from account- 
books, and so on. 

Children often went long distances to school, 
and in winter the older ones used snow-shoes 
and the younger were drawn upon sleds. For 
the short season during which school lasted the 
hours were very long, the tasks hard, and the 
rules strict. Too often a child could learn little 
more than the merest beginnings of reading 
and writing ; but, on the other hand, there was 
httle use for these arts except in the larger places. 

The young people of the great houses were 
educated in a few cases in England, or perhaps 
the greater number of them were taught at home 
by tutors or by the clergymen of the parishes. 
It was not at all uncommon for men well in- 
structed in England to be among the bond- 
servants who had come to Virginia to better their 
condition, and these men were able to give 
what instruction was thought necessary for the 
time. They taught Latin, usually, Greek now 



224 When America Was New 

and then, and often gave their pupils a good 
knowledge of reading, writing, and figures. 

The life of the colonists required very steady- 
industry. There was constant work to be done 
indoors and out, and whenever they could make 
an amusement or pastime out of a piece of work 
they were very glad to do so. Consequently, all 
occasions upon which neighbors had to get to- 
gether to help one another in work too heavy for 
any single household, were, so far as possible, 
made into merrymakings. The women had 
their quilting-bees, during which food and drinks 
were served and they could talk freely although 
their hands were busy in putting the tufts of cot- 
ton through the wadded bed-spreads that in 
those days of chilly houses were so plenty. 

The building of a house could be carried on by 
a few workmen, except when it came to raising 
the heavy timbers that made the big frame. 
Since they had no derricks or mechanical helps, 
these timbers were pulled into place either by 
human strength or by great teams of oxen using 
ropes and pulleys. At such a time, the neighbors 
who came to help were welcomed to a sort of 
feast and often stayed for a dance in the evening. 

At harvest time, husking-bees were common. 
The barns, with bins piled full of corn, were 



Books, Reading and Education 225 

lighted with dozens of candles and whale-oil 
lamps, and the whole neighborhood gathered to 
strip the husks from the corn, while games, jokes, 
stories, and skylarking went on. It was an old- 
time custom that when a husker found a red ear 
of corn he was entitled to kiss one of the girls, 
and, undoubtedly, when a girl found a red ear 
that also was an excuse for kissing her. Other 
parts of harvesting were also made the occasion 
for parties and fun. 

Amusements very popular in colonial times 
and later were the spelling-bee and the singing- 
school. Possibly the spelling-bee has not yet 
been forgotten, but, in short, it consisted of divid- 
ing a school into two parties who spelled words 
given out by the teacher, each one sitting down 
as soon as he had missed a word, until a single 
proud victor remained. Singing-school certainly 
needs no explanation, except to say that its chief 
charm seemed to consist in the need for the 
young men to see the girls home after it was 
over. 

Among the amusements that were popular in 
New England may be named wrestling matches, 
leaping, foot-races, shooting at a mark, playing 
ball, and, in winter, sleighing. Dancing and 
parties, though frowned upon in the Puritanical 



226 When America Was New 

settlement, were not infrequent in certain parts of 
Connecticut and other less straight-laced com- 
munities. There is a common idea that Connec- 
ticut was the strictest of all the colonies, because 
of a belief that it was in the Connecticut Colonies 
that there existed the famous " blue laws," but 
these were never really in existence, being drawn 
up by an author who was attempting to make 
fun of the Connecticut people. 

In Virginia the men delighted in fox-hunting, 
cock-fighting, horse- racing, wrestling, dancing, to- 
gether with some card-playing and wine-drinking. 
But gambling and drinking were in those days 
marked faults of the same class of men through- 
out England. 

The young Virginians were much fonder of 
outdoor life than of study, and there were on the 
great plantations many opportunities for hunt- 
ing, horseback riding, and every sort of game and 
amusement. Some of the horses that had been 
brought by the earlier settlers had run wild in the 
woods, and chasing these was an exciting sport. 

The life of the common people was far differ- 
ent from that of the better classes. They had 
their amusements, but these were of a rough 
sort and often consisted of practical jokes, or 
rude outdoor sports, accompanied very often by 



Books, Reading and Education 227 

hard drinking in the taverns, if we may trust the 
stories of travelers. There seems to have been 
much brawHng and fighting, and fighting of 
rather a brutal sort. In fact, the common people 
of Virginia were much hke what the same 
people were in England at the time — fond of 
horseplay, cock-fighting, and popular festivals 
such as were common in the Old Country, where 
men ran races in sacks, climbed greased poles, 
and amused themselves as the country folk did 
in the fairs that were once so common through- 
out old England. 

It is hardly necessary to say that for a long 
time after the first settlement of America there 
could hardly be any time or attention given to 
the lighter sides of Hfe. Certainly no one of the 
earlier settlers could give himself to the pursuit 
of any form of art, nor would he have had a 
public even if he had produced any works of art. 
There is in this fact food for reflection for those 
who believe that the production of art work is a 
matter of inborn genius independent of one's 
surroundings, instead of being the fruit of leisure 
and the love of the beautiful. 

We have already in speaking of the ideas 
of the colonists and their feeling toward na- 
ture, shown that there is little or no trace of any 



228 When America Was New- 
care for the beauties of the natural world that 
surrounded them. Even their leisure was de- 
voted to the most practical matters, or to the re- 
ligious side of life, which to them seemed the 
most practical of all. In looking for the first 
signs of an art feeling, we shall be compelled to 
be satisfied with the decorative taste shown 
mainly by the women in the arrangement of 
their households, in their quilt-work, in their love 
for a spruce and shining home, and their taste 
for bright colors in dress. 

Among the Indians we know that there was a 
strong liking for decorative work, as shown in 
their embroidered moccasins, their headdresses, 
their decorated pipes and weapons ; but these did 
not seem to go further than some little sense of 
design and the taste for brilliant coloring. The 
men of colonial times may have cared for rich 
clothing, but their liking for it seems to have 
been rather through dandyism or a love of mak- 
ing a show, than coming from any sense of ar- 
tistic result. Even in the women's work where 
an artistic effect was sought for, it is no more 
than right to admit that the results were too often 
barbarous. How any sensitive eye could bear 
the exhibition of the samplers upon which 
young girls spent long months of toil, is a mys- 



Books, Reading and Education 229 

tery ; the stiff, distorted figures, the ungainly at- 
titudes, the crude funeral urns and weeping-wil- 
low trees all tell us plainly that the instincts for 
art of our remote ancestors were often less ahve 
than those of their Indian neighbors. 

It would be difficult to explain how such a 
state of things could exist among the people of 
a civilized nation that knew anything of the 
great nations of the past did we not remember that 
they studied the classic authors only as exercises 
in language, considered the old gods and god- 
desses of Rome and of the Greeks as being 
pagan deities, worse than idols, and took so 
serious a view of Hfe that public sentiment con- 
sidered a taste for the beautiful to be an unmanly, 
foolish thing only to be excused in womankind 
because of their weakness and lack of sense. 

Here, once more, we must except, of course, 
the few cultivated families that had come to 
America from the higher walks of life in Eng- 
land and had brought with them some litUe cul- 
tivation such as then London and other large 
cities could give. But of the common people 
and of the country generally it may be truly said 
that there was no art worthy of mention. The 
painting of a tavern sign was its highest form. 

Very nearly the same thing may be said of 



230 When America Was New 

music. The only music that came home to the 
people at all was such as a country fiddler might 
furnish for the dancers at a wedding or a merry- 
making, the singing of a few songs too often bet- 
ter fitted to a tavern than a parlor, and such 
music as was to be found in the church services. 
The same Puritanical objection to beauty as be- 
ing unworthy of a serious mind kept the church 
leaders from consenting to the improvement of 
the singing. There was so strong an opposition 
to the use of books that before a great many 
years had passed the ability to read music be- 
came very rare, even the best known hymns be- 
ing sung by ear alone, following the leading of 
some presiding elder or deacon, and were 
changed, distorted and ruined, until the strictest 
Puritan of them all need not have complained 
that they retained any beauty. The very same 
tune might be sung so differently in different 
churches as to be unrecognizable except by its 
name. No doubt there was, here and there a 
musical instrument, but there was no public 
sentiment calling for or rewarding skill in per- 
formance, and it may be said that there was not 
so much musical culture in the colonies as there 
is in most savage tribes. 

Exactly what brought this about, unless it be 



Books, Reading and Education 231 

Puritanism, it is difficult to guess ; for during the 
time of Elizabeth music had been much culti- 
vated in England, the playing of the lute, the 
viol, and other stringed instruments, was frequent 
in every household and greatly popular. 

There is little, in giving an account of the 
times, that can be added to the statement that 
none of the fine arts were yet in their beginning. 
Plays likewise were lacking, though the English 
stage had just passed through its most brilliant 
period. All this is to be explained only by the 
absence of a class that could spare the time for 
amusements, could pay for them, or support 
amusements or companies of players, or who had 
enough interest in such things to demand them. 

Even where the sentiment of the Puritans 
hardly existed, the chosen amusements of the 
men were of an active nature and their time 
was so filled with hunting, horse-racing, cock- 
fighting, wrestling, and similar pursuits, that 
they cared little for what would appeal to a less 
active and better educated sort of people. We 
shall not see the beginning of any general in- 
terest in the fine arts, or in the lighter sides of 
literature, until increasing wealth gave more 
leisure and a generation less used to outdoor life 
had grown up. 



232 When America Was New 

The only times that brought great crowds to- 
gether were weddings, funerals, races, militia- 
training days, and, in the winter, the sports of 
coasting, skating, and sleighing, which the 
Americans learned from the Dutch settlers. 

What we know of the smaller matters of 
colonial life has been gathered largely from 
journals and letters written by visitors to the 
colonies in early times. Of course there were 
not many of these outside of those who came for 
official reasons or made business trips either in 
connection with the commerce over seas or in 
order to learn something about the New World, 
whether with the idea of settling or because they 
were politically interested. 

The better classes of such visitors probably 
were those who came to Virginia, where they 
were most hospitably received, and, in fact, 
eagerly welcomed, because of the news they 
brought with them from abroad, and because 
from them could be learned the ways of the Old 
World, which the transplanted families consid- 
ered the best fashion. 

These visitors bear testimony to the great 
plenty and wealth of the richer planters, but 
they also speak of their way of life as having a 
touch of the barbaric. The whole country 



Books, Reading and Education 233 

seemed to them, naturally enough, almost a rude 
wilderness, even as compared with the conditions 
at home, which might have seemed to us little 
better. They found many of the ways of life 
very rough and the discomforts extreme. 

In going from place to place these visitors 
often had to camp out by a fire, as if they were 
explorers in a new land, and in crossing rivers at 
times either were thankful to heaven for the 
chance of finding a boat, or, in the absence of a 
ford, would swim their horses. They carried 
provisions with them, since there was no place 
where travelers could be lodged, except in the 
larger settlements. They complain also of the 
lack of welcome in some of the smaller towns, 
where strangers were still looked upon with sus- 
picion. 

As to the look of the country itself, they de- 
scribe it as thickly grown with trees, with grass, 
" man-high, unmowed, uneaten, and uselessly 
withering." They speak of the great abundance 
of fish in the streams and animals in the woods. 

As to the people, one characteristic remarked 
upon is the great love of dress among the women, 
and the lack of nicety about little matters. Thus 
two French travelers tell us how " Silk stockings 
were worn with boots, window-panes were left 



234 When America Was New 

unmended, and the pairs of horses to draw the 
planters' coaches were not carefully matched." 

They tell us how much visiting there was in 
the Southern plantations — whole families coming 
on horseback in the morning and not returning 
home until late at night. More than one of the 
travelers reports trouble with the rough fellows 
of the smaller towns, who, without intending 
any great harm, would play rough practical 
jokes and become quarrelsome when their horse- 
play was resented. Indeed, from the reports of 
these travelers, although they agree that the best 
classes of Virginians were the finest in the coun- 
try, yet they found the only very poor, the only 
idlers, living in this same region of large farms ; 
whereas in early New England there was really 
no poverty at all — no actual distress, at least. 



CHAPTER XI 

EFFECTS OF THE NEW LIFE 

ALTHOUGH in reading of the sickness 
and the privations suffered by the new- 
comers to America we are hkely to 
think of the people themselves as not being 
especially strong and clever, yet it must be re- 
membered that the conditions surrounding them 
were such as to task the brain and muscle, the 
health and the spirit, of the best. These men 
were unusual, or they would not have come. 
The selection among the families that had fled 
from England to Holland included only the 
strongest and best fitted in making up the party 
to go upon the Mayjloivcr. Although so many, 
both north and south, died under their hard- 
ships, yet only the strongest and ablest men and 
women, as a rule, tried to make the journey, and 
of these only the most hardy lived through the 
earlier days. 

In short, it may be said that the beginners of 

America were chosen, tried, and sifted, until the 

ancestors of the race that made our nation out of 

the wilderness were the chosen of the chosen. 

235 



236 When America Was New 

Both north and south, the great trials of the 
sea-voyage and the need of strong bodies and 
active minds to meet the conditions of Hfe in the 
new country resulted in making the earliest set- 
tlers and their children a hardy, rugged race, full 
of resources. They had to work with their 
hands, to contrive with their minds, to be cour- 
ageous, patient, and enduring. Their children, 
who had known no other life, met the new con- 
ditions more cheerfully and thrived under them 
better than their parents. 

So soon as the worst troubles were past, the 
settlers were in many ways a great deal better off 
than they had been at home. They had more 
abundant food, they lived more wholesome out- 
door lives ; they learned, in meeting the dangers 
and difficulties of warfare and hunting, in con- 
triving to make for themselves what they needed, 
in being content with a little and in making the 
best of it, what things in life were best worth 
having and what might be spared. 

It is true that they had no learning, and could 
know but little of the world's affairs ; but if they 
did not read of others' deeds, they were living a 
hfe that brought them into what was more im- 
proving than any reading could have been. The 
world about them was new and excited their in- 



Effects of the New Life 237 

terest as the more familiar facts of the old life 
could not do. They had to leave the old ways 
worn easy for them by their ancestors, and could 
not therefore live without much thinking, as men 
and women and children may do where every- 
thing is prepared for them. They had in the 
New World few to direct them, and had left be- 
hind them a great mass of old laws, old notions, 
old beliefs, that had saved them the trouble of 
thinking. 

In short, the men of the New World may be 
compared to children who pass from the home- 
life where everything is laid down by rule, and 
where they think little for themselves, to a life in 
the outer world where they must make them- 
selves over. Instead of having parents and 
elders to tell them what to do, they must meet 
and decide questions for themselves. We all 
know that it is in this way that young people's 
characters are best formed, and the effect upon 
the first Americans was similar to this. Chosen 
men in the first place, they learned by their freer, 
wider, and deeper life to develop the best that was 
in them. At times, of course, this change made 
men worse, just as more freedom and greater op- 
portunities sometimes make young people worse. 
But in nearly every case the effect was to make 



238 When America Was New 

men more manly and to develop their better 
powers. 

It is not easy to give instances, since even a 
brief account of a few of the more prominent 
men in a single colony during its first eighty or 
ninety years, requires more space than we can 
give. Their lives can be best understood only by 
reading them in full. Captain John Smith, for 
example, from being no more than a clever 
soldier and reckless adventurer, after coming to 
the Virginia Colony found himself thinking 
about the future of the whole Continent of 
America, of vi^hat this new land was to become 
to England, of how colonies should be founded, 
governed, and cared for, of what industries were 
best, and, generally, of questions with which 
statesmen deal. He became therefore a states- 
man. 

At a later time, when trade between England 
and Virginia increased, men who at first entered 
it with no idea except to become rich were led to 
take an interest in the colony and its govern- 
ment, to settle there, and to become leading 
men, busy with questions of government and 
with the management of great estates and the 
welfare of their neighbors. 

Such a man was Thomas Stegg, the younger. 



Effects of the New Life 239 

His father was a sea captain who came to the 
James River in the earHest times, settled there, 
and after a Hfe of trade died a rich man, leaving 
his property to his son of the same name. This 
son became a member of the Virginia Council, 
but being childless, sent to England for his 
nephew, William Byrd, son of a London gold- 
smith. William Byrd married the daughter of a 
fine cavalier family, was distinguished as a business 
man and statesman, and left a son who bore the 
same name and succeeded to the place held by 
his father and his great-uncle. 

All three had continued their trading life, but 
the growth in civilization may be measured by 
the fact that the younger William Byrd became 
the owner of a library most remarkable for his 
time, containing over thirty-six hundred volumes, 
seven hundred being historical books. It was 
probably one of the largest collections of books 
made at that time, but Byrd was a scholar. John 
Fiske, the historian, calls Byrd " one of the most 
eminent men of affairs in old Virginia, and 
eminent also as a man of letters." 

Both father and son were Receiver Generals, 
and the son became noted as a historical writer. 
A sentence quoted by Fiske from his works has a 
humorous touch that brings him near to us. He 



240 When America Was New 

speaks of visiting two mills after a dry season, 
and of having " the grief to find them both stand 
as still for the want of water as a dead woman's 
tongue for want of breath. It had rained so lit- 
tle for many weeks above the falls that the 
Naiads had hardly enough water left to wash 
their faces." 

Thus we see the grandson of a London gold- 
smith become noted in politics, literature, and 
commerce, the founder of a distinguished family, 
and owner of great and beautiful estates. In a 
way, this career is hke that of many other men 
who came to Virginia, even if they were not so 
distinguished. 

A good type of the bold and able younger 
men was Nathaniel Bacon, who, when Governor 
Berkeley was unwilling to send forces against the 
Indians, raised a force of volunteers, subdued the 
Indians, and when the governor attempted to 
punish him, defied the governor, called his men 
together, and put the governor to flight. Berke- 
ley came back with a strong force of men and 
ships, taking possession of Jamestown. Then 
Bacon besieged the town, drove the governor 
out, and burned Jamestown. But after Bacon's 
rebellion had really succeeded, it came to an end 
because of the death of its leader. Then Berke- 



Effects of the New Life 241 

ley came back to power, and punished some of 
the rebels so severely that he was recalled to 
England. 

Berkeley, upon his return to England, tried to 
see the King, Charles II, and gain his favor ; but 
Charles, who never lacked for good sense, refused 
to see the deposed governor, saying, " That old 
fool has hanged more men in that naked country 
than I have done for the murder of my father." 

The main importance of this struggle between 
the governor and the people is its proof of the 
independence of the planters and of their deter- 
mination to insist upon their rights against the 
royal governors, even against the King himself. 
It showed that the Americans felt that they had 
made homes for themselves without the help of 
the governors at home, and that they would de- 
fend these homes, no matter what the laws of 
England might provide. 

But we must see that under the conditions of 
life in Virginia and other colonies of the same 
kind, the rich planters were really only English- 
men living away from home. They heard from 
England frequently, saw visitors from across the 
ocean, knew all that went on, and were different 
from Englishmen of the same time only in hav- 
ing to govern themselves, and in having to deal 



242 When America Was New 

with bond-servants and slaves rather than with 
hired men. They also had to bear in mind, dur- 
ing the earlier years, the constant danger from 
the Indians ; and this made them think more of 
war and weapons than did the English gentlemen. 

The founders of New England, as has been said, 
were of two types. The main type represented 
by the Pilgrim, may be said to be a man of 
the middle class, either a farmer or a tradesman 
who had made his living in some small way in 
England and become separated from his neigh- 
bors by his independence in religious questions. 
In coming to America he was compelled to 
develop from one who had been used to a nar- 
row, hmited life, to a man of general affairs, ready 
to deal with all sorts of questions, whether these 
related to his church, to the schooling of his 
children, or to the managing of his business. He 
was forced to work for his living with his hands 
and to make for himself out of the raw material 
whatever he needed. In this way he at first be- 
came a skilful worker with tools, a shrewd, sav- 
ing, and careful farmer or merchant, and, above 
all, a man who could contrive. In short, he de- 
veloped into the " smart Yankee," and the enter- 
prising American. 

The more prominent men of the very earliest 



Effects of the New Life 243 

time were those who had to do with Church mat- 
ters and with religious questions, because such 
matters were what the people put first and cared 
most about. Later, as trade and commerce grew 
and as manufactures were set up, the men of 
business, the clever mechanics, and inventors 
came to the front, and we hear of bold merchants 
who send ships throughout the world wherever 
there is profit to be made, who cut down the 
great forests and build the swiftest ships in the 
world, who think out ways of making machinery 
take the place of the workers who were not nu- 
merous enough to do all that needed to be done in 
the New World ; of pioneers and engineers, of 
bold Indian fighters who conquer for the colonies 
new territory and hold it against the Indians, and 
establish towns in the wilderness. 

At the same time that the men changed their 
way of living, and from being settlers and Indian 
fighters and farmers became townspeople, manu- 
facturers and merchants, the women and children, 
having more leisure time and being able to live 
in greater comfort, ceased to be mere household 
workers. Something like social life begins ; there 
is visiting among the families ; the women, in- 
stead of exchanging receipts for cooking, teach 
one another embroidery and fancy work ; and, 



244 When America Was New 

so far as possible, attempt to live more as do the 
better classes in England. They imitate the 
fashions of the old country in their clothing, in 
hair dressing, in amusements ; and they begin, 
especially, to delight in gardening ; as, indeed, 
was the case much earlier in Virginia and the 
Carolinas. The sale of flowers and seeds by 
women was not at all uncommon as a way of 
making a living. Mrs. Earle tells us that the 
grounds of some of the old colonial homes may 
still be traced by the flowering plants that once 
stood in their gardens, and that we may now and 
then find still growing wild the descendants of 
flowers first introduced by some colonial house- 
wife. 

As to their love of fine clothing, we find traces 
of it still in the old law books, where there are 
records of fines imposed upon women for their 
finery, and especially for the wearing of silk or 
laces by women who were not of high enough 
social station for this luxury. But the offense 
continued to grow, and it was the law that had 
to give way rather than the fashion. 

As to the children, the chief change made in 
their life by the growing of the country was in 
the matter of their education. Schools were 



Effects of the New Life 245 

established as soon as the children could be 
spared from home work, and as soon as the towns 
could afford to put up buildings and provide 
teachers. The hours saved from work were given 
to schooling, and with the school hours more 
time was given to play. In this way the growth 
of the country really gave the children back their 
childhood. They had time to grow up and were 
not too soon expected to follow in the footsteps 
of their fathers and mothers. 

In the earliest times we read of children knit- 
ting stockings at four years of age. And a little 
later we shall still see that children were expected 
to do such light work as winding thread, carding 
wool, and spinning, until they were able to do 
their part at the heavy looms. But as we come 
nearer to our own times we shall find that the 
elders believed more and more in the wisdom of 
leaving children to develop and to prepare for life 
before calling them to take an actual part in it. 

This longer education for children has always 
come about as soon as people begin to be rich 
enough to spare the children from helping in 
their own work, and in the latter part of our first 
century people were growing rich in America. 
This came about naturally when a hard-working 
and clever race came to a land so varied in cU- 



246 When America Was New 

mate, so rich in soil, and lying in a latitude that 
gave good weather for farming and for work of 
all sorts. 

We have shown already how the possession of 
a little money helped a man to make more, and 
have said that this power to make larger profits 
came from raising things or making things that 
could be sold either to other colonies or abroad. 
But as fast as men tried to get crops from the soil, 
wood from the forests, fish from the sea, and built 
vessels, and so on, the possession of land became 
more and more valuable. No matter what sort 
of work a man does, he must get the thing to 
work upon chiefly from the land, and when this 
land is owned by some one who can charge for 
the right to take things from it, the owning of 
plenty of land will make the owner rich ; for he 
receives money or property in return only for 
saying that another man may work on the land 
and use what is raised from it for living or for 
trade. 

There was much luck in the question of which 
settlers should become rich. No one, at first, 
could tell what parts of the land would be worth 
most because of the growth of towns or cities, 
or the finding of mines, or the discovery of quar- 
ries, and so on. If in taking up a piece of land 



Effects of the New Life 247 

a settler happened to hit upon a piece that 
turned out very useful, it would become valuable 
either to rent or to use, and would bring him a 
better income than came to his neighbor who 
had not been so lucky. Once having put aside 
more property than was needed for a living, it 
was easy to get hold of chances to make more, 
since everybody was busily at work, and all were 
trying to make use of the wealth of the great 
new country into which they had come. 

The growing of commerce and trade also 
brought out the talents of some men for busi- 
ness, showed them to be good managers, and 
gave them employment with a chance to earn a 
good income. The American Colonies did not 
have to wait until they became markets for each 
other, since they were closely connected with an 
old country across the sea that would buy what 
they sent. 

What happened at the North to men of small 
means at the start, for a time happened even 
oftener to the men who had property enough to 
take up large tracts of land in the South. They 
were able to employ plenty of laborers to raise 
large crops, and from their sale to put new fields 
under cultivation. In fact, we may look upon 
America at the time as a great warehouse full of 



248 When America Was New 

raw material ready to be made into all the things 
men use, and as having been opened suddenly to 
a number of clever men ready to do the work of 
making that raw material ready for the market. 

Those who grew rich first were of course the 
ones who owned the land, or, to carry out our 
figure of speech, made others pay for the use of 
the raw material in the warehouse, and following 
them and depending on them, were the men who 
were busied in transporting the goods from the 
places where they were made to those where 
they were sold; and many men acquired for- 
tunes as merchant traders and shipowners. 

In those days any man of industry and good 
character who did not waste what he earned, 
would find living cheap and might acquire prop- 
erty. A little later, when the newcomers found 
themselves in a land already possessed by others, 
it became harder for them to succeed. The best 
harbors, the best plantations, the choicest places 
for shipyards, and so on, were in the possession 
of those who had come before them, and it re- 
quired in these later comers greater ability to 
make the same success. Those who remained 
poor (and we have already learned that there was 
no real poverty in the northern colonies) were 
men who did not make good use of their oppor- 



Effects of the New Life 249 

tunities, who were idle, drank too much, or who 
had no ambition to drive them to the steady 
industry required by life in a busy country. 

Later generations, consisted, of course, of these 
two first classes of rich and poor, and their start 
in life was very different from one another. The 
son of a rich merchant, for example, might begin 
as the owner of a number of fine vessels, with a 
business connection already made for him by his 
father, and with a careful training from his early 
days that taught him how to use the very things 
that had made his father's wealth. If he were of 
the same ability and the same good character, he 
could hardly fail to increase his wealth even 
faster than his father had done. 

On the other hand, the son of a man who had 
lived all his life from hand to mouth would have 
to begin with little or nothing except his own 
brain and hands, and would not be likely to over- 
come the start of the other young man born to 
wealth. 

All this serves to explain both why, as a com- 
munity grows older, there is a division into the 
rich and the poor, and also why the difference 
between them is likely to increase, so that— to 
use a phrase often heard — the rich become richer 
and the poor become poorer. It will also show 



250 When America Was New 

that if any people were taken out of their sur- 
roundings and put, as the first Americans were 
put, into a new country, they would all begin in 
much the same circumstances, but in a few gen- 
erations would come again to be divided into the 
rich and the poor. 

As a result of this change from the early state 
of things where men's possessions and ways of 
life were about alike, it came about that the 
people began to divide into the rich and the 
poor, and into different social classes. 

The first result of gaining wealth in a family is 
to allow time for the longer and more careful 
teaching of the children, which ought to give 
them a better opportunity for success in life, and 
usually does so. A difference in the education 
of the young people of a community results in 
making them less likely to keep together in after 
life. Certain callings require this long prepara- 
tion, and into these callings go the children of 
those who can afford to educate them. Such 
callings are the so-called learned professions ; 
that is, the ministry, the bar, and medicine, which 
can hardly be entered upon by the children of 
parents who must turn the young out 'into the 
world to support themselves at an early age. 

With a difference in education and in callings, 



Effects of the New Life 251 

there comes a difference in interests that will in 
time prevent any close association between men 
whose daily life is so different as that of the 
lawyer and the farmer, the great merchant and 
the sailor, the clergyman and the lumberman. 
They do not think about the same matters, as a 
rule, and therefore can find Httle pleasure in each 
other's society. This difference once begun tends 
to make others. There is not the same nicety 
of dress in one as in the other, there is a differ- 
ence in the working hours, and in their daily 
companions, a difference in tastes and in amuse- 
ments. 

It is these causes that divide people into social 
classes rather than any difference in the people 
themselves or any lack of human feeling toward 
one another. For these reasons, in the northern 
colonies there began to be social divisions be- 
tween the great merchants and their families and 
the small traders who had less leisure and con- 
sequently less cultivation. 

Where these differences of social rank were 
not created, as in the country towns made up of 
men whose circumstances remained much alike, 
the same condition of affairs as in the early set- 
tlements was not greatly changed, and the fami- 
lies of a neighborhood remained united and com- 



252 When America Was New 

panionable and were not grouped. In the towns 
and still more in the larger cities where com- 
merce, trade, and manufacture, created classes 
with wealth and leisure enough to make them 
lead a life different from that of those whom they 
employ, the forming of classes was rapid. 

In order to be fair to our ancestors, we must 
remember that this change in their way of living 
must have come about, that it showed no loss of 
democratic feeling, and was no proof that they 
were not as united a people as before. It was 
only the getting together into groups of those 
people whose bringing up and whose way of life 
made them agreeable to one another. That af- 
ter a time one of these classes was considered to 
be superior to the other, that its ways were imi- 
tated, and that those who had no right to be 
numbered in it sought to join the class simply be- 
cause they thought it better, was no fault of 
either class. Sensible men and women in those 
times, as in our own, know that the qualities 
that really matter do not depend upon either 
wealth or leisure and may be found among men 
and women of all ranks of Hfe. 

Another thing that tended to fix the division 
between the different classes that grew up was 
the fact that as the country improved men of a 



Effects of the New Life 253 

better class in England came to America to live, 
but lived in much the same way they had at 
home ; and these brought with them the feelings 
of social classes that had existed in the old coun- 
try. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN 

IN considering the womenkind of the later 
colonial days, the first thing to bear in 
mind is the very great difference in feeling 
as to the position of women between that day and 
our own. It is hardly too much to say that in 
Enghsh law, and of course, therefore, in the laws 
of the colonies, the women had little or no rights. 
They could not leave their property by will, they 
were completely under the authority and control 
of their husbands, all that a married woman 
earned belonged as a matter of right to her hus- 
band, and mothers did not even have the power 
to claim their own children, if the father should 
choose to keep them from the mother. 

Neither was there any idea that they should 
play any part in the world except that of house- 
wife and mother, for neither of which duties had 
they any especial training beyond what came to 
them in their own home. 

When we speak of " education " in the colo- 
nies it must be understood that we mean the ed- 
254 



The Women and Children 255 

ucation of boys. If a girl were taught to read 
and write, it was all that was thought necessary. 
At home careful mothers taught the children to 
sew, to work samplers, and filled their minds 
with a little store of moral maxims and rules of 
behavior by which they were expected to live. 

In fact the chief idea about bringing up young 
girls in the colonies might be summed up in the 
word "deportment." They were, above all 
things, taught to carry themselves erect, and in 
order to insure this the fashionable httle girls be- 
gan at an early age to be laced up tight in bar- 
barous machines made of metal or stiff slabs of 
wood— machines beside which the modern corset 
is as yielding as a kid glove. In order to be 
made to stand straight, they were even set in 
stiff-backed chairs with a straight board against 
the spine and there strapped for hours at a time. 
Of course this made them ache to the very bone. 
This process was not entirely like the binding 
of the Chinese women's feet, but may well be 
compared to it. Even in China it is the custom 
to leave alone the feet of women whose lives are 
to be passed upon the river-boats, and in the 
same way the strict rules of behavior were not 
imposed upon the wives and daughters of the 
earlier settlers, whose too " correct deportment " 



256 When America Was New 

might have interfered with their usefulness as 
workers and Indian fighters. But we are talking 
of the " well brought-up." The dwellers in the 
small country places were spared such troubles. 

But with the growth of town-life and the 
taking up of Old World fashions, many absurdi- 
ties of dress, demeanor, and deportment, were ea- 
gerly cultivated. What girls were taught besides 
the useful arts may be briefly described as " ac- 
complishments " ; a little singing, rarely the 
playing upon some musical instrument, dancing 
the stately and rather poky figures of the minuet, 
an old-fashioned, slow walking dance with many 
bows and curtseys, and so on — made up the 
young lady's preparation for life. 

From their mothers, who had been good 
housewives, the second generation of the colo- 
nial women did receive, however, a fair amount 
of real housewifely knowledge. They still took 
pride in their houses, in their kitchens and their 
flower-gardens ; and among those who were for- 
tunate enough not to be rich, much of the old, 
simpler home-life still remained. They did good 
honest work in kitchen, pantry, dairy, and gar- 
den. 

The children of the earliest settlers, had come 
all too soon to share fully in the lives of their 



The Women and Children 257 

fathers and mothers, assisting them in all their 
work, and taking their part of the hardships and 
dangers of the family. When this period had 
passed in the earHer settlements, and the town- 
life began, the young people, besides giving more 
time to education than before, began to be dif- 
ferently trained in view of their differing pros- 
pects in life. The son of a merchant, for ex- 
ample, very soon after he had finished his gram- 
mar-school course and had acquired something 
of bookkeeping and arithmetic, went into his 
father's office to begin an apprenticeship in com- 
merce — to keep accounts, write letters, and so 
on. 

The son of a colonial aristocrat, on the con- 
trary, probably began to study for one of the 
learned professions, and was early taught the 
elaborate code of manners that would fit him to 
take part in the social gatherings of the time. 
We still have certain long lists of the clothing 
that was thought necessary for the children of 
fashionable families, showing that they played 
their part in society ; and just as the sister was 
taught to appear at her best in the ballroom, so 
the boy learned to wear his sword gracefully, 
make his bow, bear himself properly toward his 
elders according to their rank, to drink a guest's 



258 When America Was New 

health, to make his little speech in proposing to 
drink a sentiment or a toast, and to know the ins 
and outs of etiquette, and the demands of the 
" code of honor " which taught that a gentleman 
must at any time be ready to fight a duel when 
need should arise. 

It is not easy for us to understand how much 
of this old code has passed away. To-day there 
is little difference of manners among our people, 
at least not such a difference as divides the 
people sharply into classes. But then there was 
a fixed hard line drawn between " polite society " 
and " the common people " ; and to play his part 
in the former, a boy needed either training from 
boyhood up or a lifelong familiarity with the 
ways of the more aristocratic people. It was not 
always that the manners of polite society were 
better, nor were the fashionable folk always bet- 
ter behaved ; but they all kept to certain forms 
of address, insisted upon a certain respect from 
those they thought their inferiors, and allowed to 
their equals more intimacy than to others. 

In fact, people in polite society differed from 
the common people not only in the way of life, 
but in dress, in demeanor, and sometimes in their 
ideas of right and wrong. A man could not al- 
ways gain entrance into polite society even 




^\^w:\,' ' 







I 



t A 



:fi'^''''^i 




The Women and Children 259 

though he enjoyed the respect of the community, 
was well educated, and a man of great natural 
powers. Even at a later date we find Thack- 
eray 's character, Madam Warrington, a fine lady 
of Virginia, speaking slightingly of the man 
Benjamin Franklin as a common printer's boy, 
and wondering that the English officers who 
came with Braddock should admit "such per- 
sons " to their society, if they knew how low was 
his origin. 

Among sensible people such differences have 
entirely passed away. Though they do still 
recognize social rank, it does not prevent them 
from valuing worthy men or women whatever 
their beginnings. 

But although these things were still much 
thought of in the early colonies, yet even in those 
times there was the beginning of the conditions 
that were to put an end to these Old World 
notions. In a new country the old lines could 
not be kept up ; there were too many who by 
their wealth and by their own career, had earned 
the respect of their neighbors for the lines to be 
strictly drawn against them. The same causes 
that had made the old families prominent were 
all the time bringing forward new people and 
giving them the same claim to respect. Condi- 



26o When America Was New 

tions of life were changing, so that the impor- 
tance of certain ranks of life, such as the ministry, 
was not so great as it had been in the early days — 
and the more powerful men of the community, 
the possessors of its wealth, the managers of its 
affairs, were often found among men whose fore- 
fathers had come empty-handed to the country. 

So, although the change from rude settlements 
to settled towns had brought back something of 
the old feeling as to ranks, it had also changed 
the nature of the people who made up the better 
society. 

To put all this shortly, we may say that the 
way of life in the New World was preparing the 
younger generation for a democracy — that is, for 
a land in which there is equality among the 
people so far as their rights and duties are con- 
cerned — and was putting an end to the old idea 
that the rights of some classes were to be con- 
sidered before those of others. 

All that remained in order to complete the 
change was to follow — the cutting off of the New 
Country from the Old. 

As to the younger people — the children — 
their start in life was much the same in all the 
northern colonies. There were few schools, and 
nearly all the children of any town or village 



The Women and Children 261 

must go to the same schools, and have the same 
teaching. 

Probably the strongest motive that moved the 
colonists to provide that all their children should 
be educated was a religious one. To the Pu- 
ritans, and people like them, it seemed wicked to 
leave any one unable to read the Scriptures for 
himself and to profit by the truth they contained. 
Since they thought that each person had a right 
to go for himself to the Bible in order to find out 
the truth, they of course had to grant to every 
child the right to at least enough teaching to en- 
able him to read the Bible. We therefore find 
that in the history of the northern colonists the 
ruHng powers took steps early to see that there 
were schools in which children should be taught 
to read, write and spell ; and it was also insisted 
that all parents should send their children to 
these classes, or that the children should be taken 
from them and made to go. 

Another purpose the laws about education 
spoke of was that of making young people able 
to read the laws of the colonies, which in those 
times was most important if one was to escape 
the many fines and punishments. In order to 
pay the school expenses, these were charged 
sometimes against the property owned by the 



262 When America Was New 

town in general, or they were shared by the 
parents whose children attended a common 
school. 

By about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury most of the colonies in the north had made 
some provision for pubHc education — a thing 
that did not take place in the southern colonies 
for a long period afterward; probably because 
those who ruled in the southern colonies were 
better able to look after the education of their 
own children and did not feel that the working 
people were bettered by being taught. The south- 
ern people for a long time thought that the best 
teaching in religious matters was that given by 
the church, and did not think it wise that the 
ordinary people should form their own opinions 
on such matters from reading. At all events, 
the setting up of public schools in the south was 
very long delayed. 

Of course the schools of early colonial times 
were built and furnished in the same rough way 
as the settlers' cabins. They were log-houses, or 
small board structures a little later, provided with 
the few rough benches that were needed, and in 
place of desks had long board tables. The mas- 
ter sat behind the only desk, or separate writing- 
table, and ruled his scholars with the same 



The Women and Children 263 

tyranny that then seemed to belong to all persons 
in power. 

Since many of his boys were big brawny 
fellows, used from childhood to hard work upon 
a farm, he had need of all his authority and force 
to keep them in order ; and the teacher did not 
always succeed. Many stories of life in the old 
times show us that it was a sort of custom for the 
biggest boys to defy the master on purpose to 
bring about a fight with him, and that the master 
who could not hold his own in the struggle was 
not thought by the parents fit for his place. The 
master who proved conqueror was admitted to 
have earned the right to rule, and usually had no 
further trouble. 

Of what was taught in such schools we have 
already spoken, but it should be mentioned that 
the providing of wood for the fire and seeing that 
the fire was kept going was an important matter 
usually made the duty of the bigger boys. 

Hard as was the learning to read for children 
unused to study, learning to write was much more 
of a task. In fact, it was looked upon (as indeed 
it still should be), as the acquiring of a fine art ; 
and old books tell at length all the steps necessary 
that a young man should become a skilful pen- 
man, able to prepare his materials and tools and 



264 When America Was New 

to turn out copies in a *' fair round hand." An 
old piece of verse given in one such book de- 
scribes what a good penman should possess ; 

" A Pen- knife Razor Metal, Quills good stoi'e ; 

Gum Sandrick Powder, to pounce Paper o'er; 

Ink, shining black ; Paper more white than 
Snow, 

Round and flat Rulers, on yourself bestow. 

With willing Mind, these, and industrious 
Hand, 

Will make their Art your Servatit at Com- 
mand.'' 

It seems to us that the young people who lived 
in the Puritan colonies must have been a hard- 
worked, serious and rather a priggish lot if they 
did as their elders tried to make them do. Prob- 
ably there was enough iiveHness left in most of 
them, in spite of the strict Sundays, the long 
meetings, and the hard schooling. But some of 
the youngsters had all the boyishness taken out 
of their lives. 

Sydney Fisher, in his book on colonial times, 
quotes from the diary of a boy, or at least of a 
very young man, the following extract : " Of the 
manifold sins which then I was guilty of, none so 
sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was 
whittling on the Sabbath day ; and for fear of 



The Women and Children 265 

being seen, I did it behind the door. A great 
reproach of God." 

Upon this Fisher comments : *' This morbid 
youth, who, in Virginia, would have been hunting 
wild horses and foxes, is said to have prayed in 
his sleep, made long lists of sins and things for- 
bidden,' chewed much on excellent sermons,' read 
the Bible, and ' applied himself to fetch a note 
and prayer out of each verse.' " 

We are not surprised to learn, after this, that 
the poor creature lived in the deepest despair and 
died at the age of nineteen ! 

Of course it would not be fair to think that any 
community of young people was made up largely 
of such religious bigots, but the men who set the 
fashion for the community and who had the most 
influence, were men who taught this sort of thing ; 
just as the men who in Virginia set the fashion 
were the great planters whose life has already been 
told. Consequently, among the young people of 
colonial times, we find every sort, from the hunt- 
ing, riding, outdoor loving sons and daughters of 
the Southern planters or the northern frontiers- 
man, to the town or city-bred boys and girls busy 
at schooling and games, and the Puritanical New 
England young person who thought more of the 
invisible world than of every-day matters. 



266 When America Was New 

But, fortunately, most of the New World's 
young people were a healthy, simple, hard-work- 
ing jolly set, not too bookish to miss the educa- 
tion that their life gave them. 

Life in America was simpler than that of the old 
countries, and the children saw a country in the 
making. They were lucky not to be born into a 
world where everything is ready made. They 
understood things from seeing them done before 
their eyes. A colonial boy or girl saw houses 
built, ships made from the first timbers to the last 
ropes ; and was not puzzled by having to study for 
years before he could understand the working of 
the contrivances that were around him everywhere. 

A child born to-day comes into a world where 
there are such things as electric lights, wireless 
telegraphs, dynamos, trolley-cars, triple-expan- 
sion engines, motor cars, submarine-boats, cameras 
that take pictures in a thousandth of a second. 
His life must begin with years of teaching, or he 
will be amid mysteries always. 

But the colonial child could soon understand 
nearly everything he saw, and in a few years could 
know as much as his elders. He had less edu- 
cation than our children, but he needed very 
little. 

As compared with the boys and girls of their 



The Women and Children 267 

own time in foreign lands, the children of the col- 
onies also had the advantage ; for compared to 
these also, the colony children found it easier to 
understand Hfe and to take part in its affairs. 



CHAPTER XIII 
GROWTH OF A NEW PEOPLE 

IN the history of the world a hundred, or even 
two or three hundred years, is but a short 
time ; and in some lands, like that of the 
Chinese and the Mongolian tribes, that number of 
years may be passed without making any great 
change in the people or even in their smaller cus- 
toms. Even in the lands where the people are 
what we call " progressive," until our own time a 
century or two did not make very much differ- 
ence in the ways of the people. 

Before the inventions that have so transformed 
the world, there were no such great changes 
seen, even in several centuries, as are now seen 
in the lifetime of a single man. And yet 
within a hundred years after the coming of the 
white men to America there had been changes 
so great as to make them in many respects a 
people unlike any of those that sent settlers to 
America. 

And this was not the result of any great in- 
vention or discovery that brought differences in 
the way of Hving. Even after the first American 
268 



Growth of a New People 269 

century had passed there was very Httle that 
would have seemed strange to the very first set- 
tlers in the lives of the people, in their houses, 
their tools, their machinery, their ships, their 
weapons, and the hke ; and yet they were a new 
people. 

Between the Old and the New the difference 
that had come about was chiefly a difTerence of 
feeling between one man and another. It may 
be that the matter may be put shortly by saying 
that the Old World was a world of " privilege." 
Men differed in their rights. They were valued 
by standards that did not depend upon the men 
themselves. On the one hand, among the higher 
classes, there was a claim that they differed from 
the ordinary people, that they had a right to a 
certain respect, and a claim to a way of life that 
they did not think was proper to their inferiors. 
On the other hand, the lower classes did not 
think of questioning the claim of the upper, nor 
did they seek for themselves the same rights or 
expect to live in the same way. 

We shall know what is meant by all this when, 
in reading the stories of the early settlers, we see 
the attempts at pomp and parade that attended 
the officials even of the rude settlements before 
they could be called towns. As the King at 



270 When America Was New 

home was attended by courtiers and soldiers 
whenever he went about in public, so in a smaller 
way the petty governors and magistrates ex- 
pected to be guarded by soldiers and followed by 
attendants when they were in the exercise of 
their petty offices. 

Where such claims to distinction and to cere- 
mony were made and much thought of, it is not 
surprising that men who ought to have been 
digging in the fields or building themselves com- 
fortable houses against the winter, were likely to 
spend their time in wranglings and disputes as to 
which was the higher officer, who should be 
president or leader, and in distributing petty 
offices that were not worth the trouble of a half- 
hour's talk. 

Edward Everett Hale tells us, in writing about 
the growth of the democratic spirit, that John 
Winthrop, the Puritan Governor, considered that 
he ought to be attended by four guards, carrying 
halberds ; and when his demand for such a body- 
guard was refused, arrayed four of his own serv- 
ants in uniform rather than to go about without 
proper dignity, as he considered it. 

It is hardly necessary to explain that at a time 
when men were making a civilization out of a 
wilderness they could not long afford to consider 



Growth of a New People 271 

these trifles. There was Httle use, in a new set- 
tlement, for a man to dress himself in rich cloth- 
ing, laces and velvets, and to call himself a 
" governor," unless he could also prove in times 
of trouble or war or public trial, that he was a 
man fit to govern. 

Bacon's rebellion in Virginia shows how the 
Americans, even in their earlier years, put down 
the pretensions of a man who would not do his 
duty. In the newer settlements also, too unat- 
tractive to tempt any of the better classes to 
share their hardships, the Americans were com- 
pelled to get along without the many officials 
that in the Old World had been looked upon as 
necessary. They soon learned that a man could 
lead his neighbors to a victory against the Indians 
even if he wore his working clothes, instead of 
being arrayed in the regular costume of a soldier. 
They found that the men of any settlement were 
quite able to rule themselves, to punish wrong- 
doers among their number, and to decide what 
should be done in times of public danger, even 
though none of them had been appointed leaders 
or rulers under some high-sounding name, or be- 
longed to the class that had so long been thought 
the only one that could govern and judge its 
fellows. 



272 When America Was New 

The same feeling had made a great difference 
in their behef about the clergy. They had come 
from a land where the church was set up by law, 
and where the lawful religious leaders were men 
who had had a long training and claimed that 
the men of the Church were different from the 
rest of mankind. But the churches in America 
were many of them independent, and the people 
who attended these came to believe that their 
own teachers and preachers were in no way worse 
than those who claimed the sole right to such 
places. 

In the army, too, the Old World notion had 
been that only young men of the higher classes 
ought to be officers ; that there was a line to be 
drawn between the officer and the soldier, and 
that the soldier should be entirely subject to the 
officer's will — as nearly as possible a mere ma- 
chine. This idea lasted perhaps longer in 
America than many other similar ones ; but this, 
too, lost its hold upon the people when they 
found that the armies trained abroad could not 
do so well against the Indians as the raw militia- 
men, the fighting farmers and hunters who had 
had no regular training, but had learned the 
art of warfare in the woods. 

All these causes made a change in men's ideas 



Growth of a New People 273 

of one another. They learned to value one 
another by new standards. Men came to the 
front more and more because of the worth that 
was in them and less often because of the favor 
of some person high in rank or because their 
fathers had for years held high positions. 

One of the things that had given men great 
power in the old world was the owning of land. 
They had held estates so long that no one thought 
of asking how such ownership had come about, 
or at least explained it to themselves by saying 
that the lands had come from the King, that the 
King held his place by the favor of God, and 
whatever the King did must therefore be right. 

But land-owning in the New World was a dif- 
ferent thing. Nearly every free man soon be- 
came a land-owner, and therefore nothing in 
mere land-owning put one man above his fellows. 
It was seen also that the thing which gave value 
to the owning of land was only the fact that many 
people wished to use it. Where there was no 
great number of people, the land itself lay idle 
and was worth nothing to the owner or the 
public. 

Thus it was that the main things which put 
certain men above their fellows either disappeared 
or were much weakened. Men thought little of 



274 When America Was New 

mere titles, or mere family, of the names *' clergy- 
man " or " general " except where these carried 
with them ability to fulfil the duties of the priest- 
hood or of the army. Mere long descent, too, 
was in most parts of America nothing to give 
dignity to the owner. 

Instead of dividing men into classes, therefore, 
for these reasons, there was a new weighing of 
their fellows. In every neighborhood men came 
to the front who were really powerful, eloquent, 
or able to do what needed to be done. 

It must not be thought that all this came about 
in a short time ; but year by year less was thought 
of old distinctions and more of the new. 

Together with this change in men's way of 
valuing one another, there was a change in what 
men thought about. In the Old World matters 
of governing, or religion, and the like, did not 
concern most people. They were cared for by 
the few who seemed to have been born for such 
duties. But in America, where all the ways of 
government had almost to be made over, where 
there were great differences in the views of re- 
ligion, and where there were no authorities to 
save the people the trouble of thinking for them- 
selves, every man became bound to think over 
and decide these questions for himself. 



Growth of a New People 275 

Although at first in most of the colonies the 
right to have a vote on public questions was kept 
in a few hands, yet as time went on it became 
more and more the right of every man who 
owned property in a community, or who helped 
to pay for the government by being a tax- 
payer, to take part in the government. This 
no doubt happened because, in order to enforce 
the laws that were made it was necessary that 
the people themselves should be in favor of 
them. There was no ruling power except the 
armed colonists themselves ; and men would not 
help to enforce obedience to laws of which they 
did not approve or which they had not helped to 
make. 

Such, briefly put, are the main ways in which 
Americans came to differ in ideas from the men 
of their own race who remained in the Old 
World. 

And with these differences in ideas there came 
differences in behavior, in language, in dress, and 
in customs. Men who cared less for the officers 
set over them, and who began to think that in 
their rights and duties all men were equal, carried 
themselves with a different air toward their fel- 
lows. The humble farmer, or peasant, set a higher 
value on himself and looked upon other men, 



276 When America Was New 

whether high or low, as entitled to the same 
rights that he claimed for himself. 

So far as language is concerned, coming into a 
world where there were so many new things, and 
where so many things to which people had been 
used were lacking, the language had to be made 
over. 

At the time of the settlement of America, and 
for a great many years later, there were really 
two entirely different languages existing together 
among the English people. One of these was 
the speech of the people, which was made up 
largely of plain Anglo-Saxon words and the 
words that were used mainly concerning matters 
of daily life. But, together with this, there was 
also the language of the learned, which contained 
a great many words taken from the Latin and 
other foreign languages, either directly or changed 
by the addition of English endings. All the 
learned books of the time that were meant for the 
educated classes were ordinarily written in Latin, 
and it was only here and there that a poet or 
scholar would compose stories and songs for the 
people in the common tongue. 

Even as late as the time of Francis Bacon there 
was a belief, which he shared, that the tongue of 
the common people, the English speech, would 



Growth of a New People 277 

never come to have the same standing among 
learned men that belonged to the dead tongues, 
the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. For this reason 
even his " Essays," though composed at first in 
English, were put into Latin so that they might 
have the better chance to be immortal. Of course 
we know to-day that the great Chancellor was 
much mistaken, and that the book of his '• Es- 
says " has, and will continue to have, a much 
greater circulation in its English form, and that 
the Latin book of the same •* Essays " is now used 
only to refer to in case there is any doubt of its 
meaning in English. 

Besides the use by the learned men of Latin, 
there was what has been called the "court lan- 
guage," which was spoken by the aristocracy in 
London, and which was to become the fore- 
runner of our modern speech, since it was the 
English which came into the greatest use when 
traveling to and fro, and when the mixing of the 
English people had caused them to give up the 
use of the dialects, or the pecuhar speech of their 
localities. 

Of course these different kinds of speech run 
into one another; that is, the courtly English 
borrowed many terms from the common speech, 
and the common speech gradually took for its 



278 When America Was New 

own the Latinized or more difficult words that at 
first were in use only among scholars. 

One of the great causes that brought about 
this change into one common English speech 
was the translation, in the reign of King James, 
of the Scriptures into one chosen and recognized 
version of the Bible, the version that is still in 
the widest use to-day although there have been 
several other translations published. 

Dr. Eggleston points out in his "Transit of 
Civilization" that the English language was 
quickly developed by the need for new terms 
which was felt as soon as Englishmen were put 
into new lands and in the midst of strange scenes, 
because this brought about a great increase in 
the number of new words, and also helped to 
widen the meaning of old terms. An instance 
given by him of this need for new meanings is 
the difficulty found in finding the right names 
for the chiefs of the Indian tribes in America. 
The earliest settlers described them as " kings,'' 
" dukes," or " princes/' which, of course, gave the 
readers of their writings at home very little idea 
of the true powers and position of these native 
chiefs among their own people. 

The marriage of Pocahontas, for example, was 
looked upon in England as being the marriage 



Growth of a New People 279 

of a princess to a commoner ; and there was 
considerable doubt whether there was not some- 
thing treasonable in this joining of himself to a 
royal family on the part of the plain Virginia 
planter, John Rolfe.^ There is a most absurd 
scene described in the very early days of Vir- 
ginia that was caused by an attempt to carry out 
royal orders to have a •* coronation " for the 
benefit of the chief, Powhatan. Of course old 
Powhatan had not the faintest idea what the 
white settlers intended to do when they called 
upon him to kneel down and have the crown put 
upon his head ; and, in fact, the only way they 
could make him kneel was for two strong Eng- 
lishmen to push upon his shoulders until he went 
down upon his knees. 

Powhatan's bark house was at first named a 
" palace," and it was a number of years before 
the colonists had the sense to adopt the Indian 
word, " wigwam," to describe the long Indian 
hut in which the chief and his dependents found 
a lodging. 

The new animals found in America were also 
a great puzzle when it became necessary to give 
them names. Where they were entirely unlike 

^ An interesting story of this early American heroine is John 
Esten Cooke's " The Lady Pocahontas." 



28o When America Was New 

the animals known at home, they received names 
that described them ; and Dr. Eggleston gives as 
specimens of these descriptive names " bluebird, 
mocking-bird, catbird, black bear, and flying 
squirrel." But in the case of the raccoon, though 
it was at first called an ape, or a monkey, it after- 
ward received its present name as an imitation 
of that given by the Indians. 

There was still at this time something of the 
same feeling in England that in the ancient 
world had caused the Greeks and the Romans to 
name all foreigners "barbarians," or savages; 
but England divided the world into the Chris- 
tians and the infidels. It is to this feeling that 
we owe many names of animals and plants in 
America. The word infidel was to many repre- 
sented by the word, Turk, since the most familiar 
of the Asiatic infidels were known by that name. 
Then it became common to call whatever was 
barbarous or foreign, •• Turkish," and we find 
this usage in the name given to the turkey-cock, 
which means no more than •♦ foreign bird." 

The Indian grain called at first Indian corn, 
was by some Europeans in the same way called 
** Guinea wheat " or " Turkish corn," not with the 
idea that it came from Africa or Asia, but simply 
as another way of saying corn was from a foreign, 



Growth of a New People 281 

or infidel land. Even to-day we have retained 
for the word, maize, the old name, " Indian corn," 
or simply " Indian." Later food-products com- 
ing from the New World, or dishes made from 
them, were apt to be described by the native 
name, and in this way we get the word, *♦ pone," 
from " ponap," the name given by the Virginia 
Indians to bread. Hominy, samp, supawn, and 
succotash, are words that grew up in America in 
this way, from Indian terms. 

But in taking over for their own use words 
from the Indian language, it usually happened 
that the words were gradually shortened and in 
some respects changed to make them easier of 
speech; for the language of the Indians of 
America, like the language of the Chinese, was 
what is called " agglutinative," a long word whose 
meaning may be easily remembered by thinking 
that it means no more than long words made up 
of short syllables glued together. Thus the In- 
dian word for a soldier might be made up of 
a set of short words or syllables, that, put into 
English, would mean " fighting-man-with-a-long- 
knife," the sword being chosen as the chief sign 
of a soldier simply because there was no Indian 
word for the gun. 

These examples will show how the language 



282 When America Was New 

of the colonies came to differ from that they had 
spoken at home. 

In the early days of American settlements it 
was not unusual for those who came over to- 
gether to be men from the same parts of the old 
country ; and such men would be likely to use 
the same dialect, for it must not be forgotten 
that in these days, when most men spent their 
lives in a single small region and when traveling 
was rare and there was hardly any circulation of 
books or other printed matter, there was not 
much to make men acquainted with any dialects 
of English save their own. 

But as the settlements in America grew in size 
and included men from all parts of the old coun- 
try, it was natural that words applying to things 
known only at home and seldom used in colo- 
nial life, should gradually be dropped from the 
language, and that words of general use in the 
new country, and applying to the new circum- 
stances, should be learned by the children and 
young people ; and thus that the language of the 
American colonists should gradually come to be 
a common speech that did not greatly differ 
throughout the colonies. There were differen- 
ces, of course, but there was much greater like- 
ness between the English spoken in New York, 



Growth of a New People 283 

New England, Virginia and Pennsylvania, than 
between the English dialects spoken by the fore- 
fathers of these settlers" at home. 

It is rather remarkable that the thousands of 
black slaves who followed the first shipload 
brought over by Dutch traders to the Virginia 
plantations in 161 9 have had so Httle effect upon 
the American language, but it must be remem- 
bered that these slaves were entirely cut off from 
their own language, had no common language of 
their own, since they had come from parts of 
Africa far distant from one another, and natu- 
rally learned English as their only means of 
speech. The so-called •' negro dialect," as Dr. 
Eggleston tells us, is not African at all, but is the 
result of negroes having learned English from the 
white servants and bondsmen who in the early 
days were their fellow workers in Virginia. 

Another of the causes that brought about a 
change between the English of the old country 
and that of the new was the need for attaching 
new meanings to old words even when these 
were retained. An example also given by Eg- 
gleston is the word, *' servant," which was not 
resented by those to whom it was applied in 
England, since it there had only the one mean- 
ing of " follower," or one who served another in 



284 When America Was New 

any capacity as we see in the old phrase " Your 
obedient servant " used in signing letters. But 
when this same word was used in America to 
mean the black servants, the convicts who were 
sent from over the seas and obliged to work out 
their passage-money for a number of years, and 
the other serving-men and women who were in a 
sort of slavery until they had earned their free- 
dom, it was natural that free men and women 
who worked for others in a more dignified serv- 
ice should object to being called by the word 
that put them on the same plane with a class 
that was despised. 

The effect of the coming to America upon the 
matter of dress was twofold. As the people 
came to care less for the division of the world 
into classes, the matter of what one should wear 
became one that was more practical and less af- 
fected by mere custom. Those who at home 
were quite content to be forbidden by law to 
wear the fineries of polite society, saw no reason 
why in the New World they should not dress as 
they pleased and as richly as they could afford. 

Though it had been the constant attempt on 
the part of the magistrates to fight against the 
wearing of rich clothing and expensive orna- 
ments by those not considered of sufficient rank. 



Growth of a New People 285 

yet, as has been before said, all such laws proved 
useless, and the people insisted upon the right to 
dress as they chose. In this way what had been 
the main distinction between the higher and the 
lower classes year by year disappeared in Amer- 
ica, and richness of apparel meant nothing more 
than the abihty to spend money. 

Besides these changes in their minds, the 
American people changed bodily — they became 
by reason of their life in the open air and their 
more abundant food, their continual exercise of 
body and mind, better developed, healthier, and 
physically stronger than people of their own rank 
in England and European countries. They were 
really, as has been pointed out, in most ways far 
better off than they were at home. They had 
more to eat, and a greater variety of food ; they 
had more change of occupation ; they became 
accustomed to greater differences of tempera- 
ture ; and all these things helped to make a bet- 
ter and stronger race. 

Nor must it be forgotten that the ordinary man 
of the people in the Old World had little hope of 
bettering his condition, whereas in America there 
was everything to make men ambitious and to 
promise them a quick reward for hard work, for 
shrewdness, and for all those qualities that win 



286 When America Was New 

the hking and the respect of one's neighbors. 
Those who came to America felt that they had 
a chance to better themselves, and this made 
them more enterprising, more industrious, and 
also, it must be confessed, less contented and less 
docile, than their forefathers. 

It was natural that such conditions should pro- 
duce a strong, sturdy, keen and brave people ; 
and such, for the greater part, the colonists be- 
came. Many of their faults did not tend to 
make them inferior to the people of the Old 
World, since these faults were then universal. 
Hard drinking was common in those times ; 
roughness of manners was found both in the Old 
World and in the New ; and there was about the 
niceties of life much ignorance and carelessness 
that to-day are found only among the most de- 
graded. Book-learning and all the pleasures of 
the mind were confined to a very few on either 
side the ocean, and very likely to fewer among 
the Americans than abroad. But that is a thing 
which, after all, has not a great deal to do with 
character. 

While there were many good results from the 
abundance the colonists found in coming to a new 
land and fertile soil, they lost some of the habits 
of thrift that people of their kind abroad pos- 



Growth of a New People 287 

sessed and that marked the earliest settlers. 
When living became easy, there was not the same 
reason for saving, and the Americans became 
somewhat wasteful. The habit of having to 
meet dangers and to settle difficulties, not only- 
made the Americans ready, but also helped to 
make them a little reckless. 

Then, too, as they saw how much could be 
done by the possession of wealth, they came to 
set possibly too high a value upon the gaining of 
money and upon its mere possession, and to 
think too little of other things better worth a 
man's effort. The growth of America in power, 
in wealth, and in its resources, was so rapid and 
so soon gained the respect of foreign nations, that 
there was a tendency for the American who 
knew little beyond his own country to believe 
himself and his native land of more importance 
in the eyes of the outer world than either really 
was ; and while these qualities may be criticised, 
it was to prove fortunate for the Americans that 
they possessed pride, bravery, and a good opin- 
ion of themselves, for all these qualities were to 
be needed in the making of the nation of to-day. 



CHAPTER XIV 
INDEPENDENCE AND UNION 

IT is not in their early experiences that we 
can see any differences between the settlers 
and the peoples from whom they came. 
They were not quite alike, since they came from 
different parts of England, and in those days dif- 
ferent neighborhoods were unlike one another 
even though separated by a very few miles, as 
most of the people traveled little, and saw mainly 
those who lived nearer to them. 

Consequently when we read of the early days 
of one of the settlements, we find little differ- 
ences of ideas, such as have already been pointed 
out ; but in general what the settlers did is much 
what any men must have done under the same 
conditions. 

But very soon life in the New World had 
made them more Hke one another and less like 
the people who had lived in their old homes, and 
we shall see in colonial history certain happen- 
ings showing something of the new character 
acquired as a result of the new conditions. 

In the first place, a very marked trait that was 
288 



Independence and Union 289 

early cultivated was independence. They relied 
upon themselves instead of looking elsewhere 
for help, and in relying upon themselves came 
to be unwilhng to submit to the authority of 
others. In Virginia history we see this feeling 
bringing about at a very early time rebellions 
against those governors who attempted to oppose 
the will of the people in serious matters. 

The first of these was against a governor 
named Harvey, a dishonest man who took funds 
from the treasury and tried to sell lands already 
belonging to the settlers. Although he had 
been appointed by the King, the planters would 
not submit to his misconduct. They held an in- 
dignation meeting at which charges were made 
against the governor, and when he arrested some 
of the members, and tried to arrest others, the 
planters turned upon the governor, arrested him, 
and calling together an armed force compelled 
him to return to England. Although the King 
sent Harvey back to Virginia and threatened to 
punish the rebels against him, yet he was forced 
to remove the hated governor, who afterward 
was ruined by lawsuits brought against him. 
These used up all his estates and left him bank- 
rupt and friendless. 

How Governor Berkeley was opposed by 



290 When America Was New 

Bacon just a hundred years before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, we have already told ; and 
these two instances will show that in those days 
of customary submission to authority the colo- 
nists at times found the courage to resist bad 
governors even when backed by the King's 
authority. 

At a later period, when King Charles was try- 
ing to seize and punish two of the "regicides" — 
the Puritans, or Independents who had been 
mainly responsible for the execution of his 
father — these men, Gofife and Whalley, having 
escaped to New England, found refuge in the 
New Haven Colony, and were there protected 
from the King's officers and kept in safety 
though the strictest search and closest inquiry 
were made. 

Since the main questions of difference between 
the northern colonists turned on the Church and 
religious matters, we shall find that their inde- 
pendence of mind is shown by the numerous 
sects that grew up in New England and found 
many followers. The flight of Roger Williams 
into the wilderness, and his building up of Rhode 
Island and the Providence Plantations after so 
many followers came to join him in a place 
where they could hold what opinions they 



Independence and Union 291 

pleased, shows how many there were who valued 
freedom of opinion in these matters more than 
comfortable living. 

Many of the new settlements in America were 
started from the same motive of wishing to find 
freedom to think and do as the settlers pleased. 
Thus the beginning of the settlements in Con- 
necticut was made, by a clergyman named 
Hooker, who believed that all the people should 
have the right to take part in the government ; 
whereas John Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was 
one who believed in confining the government to 
the better men of the community. Consequently 
Hooker separated hmiself from the Massachusetts 
Colony and went with his congregation into the 
valley of the Connecticut River, together with 
others who believed as they did. Here three 
towns — Hartford, Windsor, and Weathersfield — 
were founded, built mainly by the congregation 
of Thomas Hooker from Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, then called Newtown, and by two other 
congregations who had followed their example. 

These people, not long after going to farming 
in the Connecticut region, formed themselves into 
a separate, self-governing body, apart from Mas- 
sachusetts ; and they drew up a body of laws 
which is declared by historians the first written 



292. When America Was New 

constitution by which a State was created in the 
history of the world. The important new thing 
about this constitution was the fact that others 
than church-members were allowed to vote in 
making the colony laws. In other ways this 
paper was not very different from the charter of 
the Massachusetts Colony. 

When the rise of the Puritan party in England 
had for a time weakened the hold of the English 
government on the American Colonies, instead 
of joining themselves more closely to the new 
government, which we might have thought they 
would have considered to be in sympathy with 
them, the colonists showed their independence 
again by insisting that there should be drawn up 
by their leading men a written code of laws 
which all could read and by which all might 
know exactly what they might and might not do. 
Before this code was written, the magistrates had 
been guided only by the general rules of law that 
had existed in England and by what they thought 
was allowed or forbidden in the Scriptures. Of 
course there could be no certainty under such a 
system as to what any magistrate would decide 
in any case, and this making of a written con- 
stitution for themselves which was done in 1 641, 
shows very plainly that the colonists meant to be 



Independence and Union 293 

not only a self-governed people, but a law-abid- 
ing one ; that is, that they sought rather inde- 
pendence than liberty apart from law. 

It is not meant to give in this book the story 
of minor happenings, but rather to show how 
those persons named in history whose stories are 
told there, were only the ones who attracted the 
most attention, and were only the most promi- 
nent persons who really represented whole 
classes. While we hear much, for example, of 
Roger Williams and of Anne Hutchinson and 
other reformers, the important thing to remember 
is that these were only the leaders who spoke out 
what many others felt. Their Hves only show 
that in the New World people were thinking for 
themselves and claiming the right to decide what 
their beliefs and what their reUgious lives should 
be. 

There were, for example, many cases in 
which the Quakers were persecuted and driven 
out of European towns. These Quakers were a 
religious sect started by George Fox, about 1647, 
who based his views on his own reading of the 
Bible. He taught that before God all men were 
equal, and so that tokens of respect were due to 
no man but only to the Creator. They would 
take no oaths to support the government nor 



294 When America Was New 

would they swear to their testimony in courts. 
No doubt among people so extreme in their 
views many were found who were what we 
should call " cranks," and for their crazy deeds 
the whole body of Quakers were held respon- 
sible. 

The persecution of the Quakers showed only 
that the New England Puritans were unwilling 
to go beyond a certain point in their religious 
toleration and did not propose to let the good 
order of their communities be upset by persons 
who did not believe in the ideas on which they 
were founded. In fact, their turning out and 
punishing of the Quakers was not very different 
from their putting an end to the settlement at 
Merrymount, * when they found that if the men 
of that settlement kept on teaching the Indians 
to drink and supplying them with firearms, it 
would endanger the lives of all the white men of 
the whole region. 

Perhaps we have said enough about the super- 
stitions of the people, for indeed that was not 
more a quality of the colonists in America than 
of people the world over. It is true that we hear 
a great deal about the witchcraft trials and 

^ Nathaniel Hawthorne has written of the doings of these un- 
desirable settlers in his story : «« The Maypole at Merrymount." 



Independence and Union 295 

troubles in the town of Salem, but it has been 
shown by historians that such happenings could 
easily be matched in many a town of Old Eng- 
land at a time not very long before. 

The need for depending upon one another in 
the New World, so that neighbors were accus- 
tomed to be called together whenever any 
larger or heavier pieces of work were to be done, 
or whenever public danger made it necessary to 
unite forces, had early taught the colonists that 
their safety lay in making common cause against 
pubhc enemies. 

It was to this willingness to work together 
that the downfall of the Indian power along the 
coast was due. There was a very much dreaded 
tribe in New England known as the Pequots, 
who were considered to be the strongest among 
the Indians, and who from time to time made 
raids against outlying settlements. When these 
attacks could no longer be borne, the men of the 
colonies united, marched into the Indian coun- 
try, captured the Indian fort, put nearly all the 
warriors to death, and even pursued into the 
woods, those who escaped this general massacre, 
finally slaying nearly all of them. This was in 

1637. 
Some years later the Indians tried to combine 



296 When America Was New 

against the whites in the same way in the great 
uprising known as King Philip's War, in 1676; 
but this only brought about a still wider com- 
bination by the colonists, who gathered from far 
and near until they had formed a great army, 
and, as they had done in the case of the Pequots, 
followed the Indians to their palisaded fort, took 
the fort, and ended the power of the hostile 
tribes at a single blow. This " working to- 
gether" in time of war with the savages — a 
thing that was forced upon them — showed the 
colonists how strong they could be when united, 
and was one of the things that led them to their 
first union. 

It was also necessary that there should be some 
agreement as to the rights of government in 
different settlements, since there were constant 
disputes coming up as to what laws applied to 
certain happenings ; and there was also a feeling 
on the part of the smaller colonies that the 
stronger ones at times claimed too much power. 
Their first union was formed in 1643, and was a 
sort of league " for mutual help and strength in 
all our future concernments." Four New Eng- 
land colonies made up this union, and were 
thereby strengthened against their chief enemies, 
the Dutch, the French, and the Indians. This 



Independence and Union 297 

first union left each colony its own right to rule 
itself, but brought together leading men as rep- 
resentatives from each, who made laws in regard 
to matters of general interest. The power of 
thus acting as one great united colony proved 
most valuable during King Phihp's War. 

These representatives were known as *' com- 
missioners," and were mainly elected to settle 
disputes between the colonies and to call out 
troops in case of danger. Their acts were not 
interfered with by England, since this was the 
time of the great Civil War between the King 
and the Commons. 

In telling the story of what the colonists were, 
we have had to refer now and then to the events 
of their history, but it will be well to make note 
in a few words of the principal happenings that 
were of most importance to them in their early 
history. 

The striking events that young readers will 
find most interesting, and which should be read 
about in books that can treat of them more fully 
than do ordinary school histories, are, in the 
early history of Virginia, the great Indian up- 
rising under Opechancanough, Powhatan's suc- 
cessor, which, except for the warning of a 
friendly Indian, might have put an end to the 



298 When America Was New 

white settlement. This occurred in 1622. Fol- 
lowing this in importance, in the same colony, 
are the story of Bacon's RebeUion, in 1676, the 
true facts of which have only recently come to 
light, and the similar revolts against other gov- 
ernors who did not treat the planters fairly. The 
introduction of negro slavery was an event that 
became of more importance in later times. 

The story of the colonies should also be com- 
pleted by some general reading (perhaps in the 
histories ,of Francis Parkman) of the doings of 
the French in Canada. They had, by means of 
taking possession first of the mouths of the great 
rivers, and settling along their courses, secured a 
claim to the interior portions of the continent; 
and as the English Colonists spread northward 
and westward, French and English were more 
and more brought into conflict. In the quarrels 
of the whites the Indians also took part; and 
much of the early warfare saw the French and 
certain tribes of Indians upon one side, opposed 
to the EngHsh and other tribes, like the Iroquois, 
on the other. But. the more serious struggles 
coming from this cause did not begin until about 
1690. 

A happening that had a very far-reaching ef- 
fect upon the southern colonies was the down- 



Independence and Union 299 

fall of the Stuart Kings in England, which 
brought about the coming of many of the cava- 
lier families to Virginia to escape living under 
the rule of Cromwell. John Fiske tells us that 
among those who came at this time were the an- 
cestors of George Washington and other famous 
Virginians who were prominent in the Revolu- 
tion. These were families of a better class of 
the English than had yet come in numbers to 
America. 

For fifteen or twenty years this flocking of the 
cavaliers into Virginia continued and made a 
great change in the nature of the Virginia 
people. These men had been in England the 
owners of large estates, and coming to Virginia 
they lived much as they had at home, an inde- 
pendent life upon great plantations, helping to 
increase the division into social classes of which 
we have already spoken. 

With the coming of the Stuarts back to the 
throne of England, or the Restoration, begins a 
period in the history of the colonies chiefly noted 
for troubles between the people and the govern- 
ors whom the King sent over to represent 
him ; and also for the attempts to control the 
commerce of the colonies in the interest of Eng- 
lish merchants. These attempts took mainly the 



300 When America Was New 

form of laws meant to keep the colonists from 
profiting by the trade across the seas, and trying 
to turn all such profits into the hands of the 
English merchants. 

Of course the laws meant to bring about this 
effect were hated by the Americans, and since 
they were not thought to be just laws, many 
American merchants and sailors had little scruple 
about escaping them by smuggling and by every 
trick and device. This period brought about for 
a time an apparent uniting of the colonies along 
the northern coast under the King's represent- 
ative, Governor Andros ; but, when the second 
English Revolution had driven James II into 
exile, and put an end to the Stuart Kings, the 
colonies went back almost at once to their 
former separate condition, showing that the gov- 
ernment of Andros had been supported only by 
force. 

In 1685 the French, who had been allowing 
the Protestants, or Huguenots, to live unmolested 
in their own land, put an end to the law that pro- 
tected them, and when these men were no longer 
safe at home many of them crossed the seas and 
took refuge in America, adding a new element 
to the population. They were a fine race, mostly 
of the middle and upper classes, were intelligent, 



Independence and Union 301 

bright, and thrifty. They had an excellent 
training in many trades and callings, besides 
possessing the taste and nicety in work which 
has always distinguished the French. They 
brought with them a great deal of knowledge in 
regard to manufactures, and many trade secrets 
that proved of the greatest value to all the coun- 
tries where they took refuge, and especially valu- 
able to America, which was trying to set up new 
industries, so that its workers were eager to learn 
what the French refugees could teach them of 
the best ways. Huguenots had come from time 
to time through the whole colonial period, but 
now they came in great numbers, and proved a 
most valuable addition to the American people. 
Trying to sum up in our minds the effect upon 
these thousands of people of living in a new way 
and in a new land, we shall find that the most 
important thing in the case of nearly all of them 
was the fact that it gave them ambition,— the 
hope of rising in the world, the chance to make 
something of themselves, and of bettering the 
fortunes of their children. With this hope, it is 
natural that they should be impatient of every- 
thing that seemed an attempt to put them back 
into the same state they had lived in at home. 
They became jealous of their rights, eager to 



302 When America Was New 

keep the liberty they had won, quick to resist 
whatever threatened to take from them what had 
cost them so many hardships, what they had won 
amid so many perils. Having learned the value 
of liberty to themselves, and seeing the good 
effect of it upon their neighbors, they became 
more willing to respect one another's rights and 
to help others to keep what all had won and 
what all valued. 

But, together with this love of liberty, the 
effect of coming to a land where at first there 
was no law and no authority except that of the 
people themselves, they had learned that there 
must be laws ; that laws must be executed ; that 
they must be made known to the people; and 
that it was the interest of all in every community 
to enforce these laws and to see that good citizens 
were not interfered with by bad, and that bad 
citizens were made to submit to force if they 
could not be persuaded to behave. 

In matters of religion, coming originally with 
the idea of allowing each man his own opinions 
and the right to conduct himself as he chose, 
they found out that it was necessary to limit 
these rights, just as in ordinary life they found 
that the rights of one must always be limited by 
those of another. Hence it was soon discovered 



Independence and Union 303 

that there were limits even to freedom in religion, 
and that a man must not be allowed, under the 
pretense of religious views, to do harm to the 
community in which he lived. 

To the earliest comers the most important 
things were bodily health, strength, bravery, and 
the ability to make a home in the wilderness. 
But after the first battle with nature was won, 
and the colonists found leisure to think of some- 
thing besides their bodily needs, they felt that 
their children ought to know more of the world 
than they themselves had done; so they set a 
high value upon education. 

These were the main qualities that have made 
the American people what they are to-day. But 
during the next century these qualities were 
greatly strengthened, and the war against the 
English put an end to the fashion of imitating 
the ways of the Old World, and gave the Amer- 
icans the wish to become in all ways a nation 
rather than a colony — a new people, rather than 
part of an old people. 

The early period of American colonial history 
ends with the beginning of a war between Eng- 
land and France in 1689. The century that fol- 
lowed was to see the making of a new nation. 



I Spanish explorations of the interior. 



TABLE OF EVENTS AND DATES 

1492 Columbus discovers West India islands. 

1497 John Cabot discovers North America. 

15 1 3 Ponce de Leon in Florida. 

Balboa sees the Pacific Ocean. 

15 18 Magellan discovers the Straits named after him. 

1524 Atlantic coastline explored. 

1534 French enter the St. Lawrence. 

1539 
1542 

1558 Accession of Queen Elizabeth. 

1584 Virginia discovered by Raleigh. 

1588 Defeat of the Spanish Grand Armada. 
English colonists first come to America. 

1602 Gosnold explores New England coast. 

1603 James I comes to the throne. 

1607 Settlement of Jamestown. 

1608 Hudson River discovered by Henry Hudson. 
French settlements in Canada. 

Pilgrims flee to Holland. 
1610 Settlement of Newfoundland by the French. 

Lord Delaware comes to Virginia as governor. 
1614 Capt. John Smith explores and maps the New England 
coast. 

1619 Self government in Virginia. 

First slaves brought to Virginia by a Dutch ship. 

1620 Plymouth settlement by the Pilgrims. 

1627 Swedes settle in New Jersey and Delaware. 

1628 Puritans settle Salem. 

1629 John Harvey, first Royal Governor in Virginia. 



3o6 Table of Events and Dates 

1630 The " Great Emigration " of Puritans to Massachusetts. 

Boston founded, under John Winthrop. 

l6'?2 "J 

V Maryland settled under the Calverts. 

1636 Connecticut settlements begun. 

Roger Williams begins Providence, in Rhode Island. 

1637 War against Pequot Indians. 

1638 Harvard College founded. 
1640 Meeting of Long Parliament. 

1642 Printing press set up at Cambridge, Mass. 

1643 New England Colonies join in a federation. 

The Civil War in England between King and Parlia- 
ment. 

Emigration to America greatly diminished. 
1649 King Charles beheaded. 

Commonwealth begins in England. 
1653 Oliver Cromwell, Protector. 
1658 Death of Cromwell. 

.-y V Quakers persecuted, 
looi j 

1660 Stuarts restored, Charles II. 

1664 England takes New Netherlands. 

South Carolina granted to Lord Clarendon. 

1670 Plymouth Colony contains 8,000 inhabitants. 

1676 Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia; "King Philip's War" 

in New England. 

1679 New Hampshire founded. 

1680 Penn obtains charter for Pennsylvania. 
1683 Philadelphia begun. 

1685 James II comes to the throne. 

1689 Overthrow of the royal governors, following the flight 

of James II, and the coming to the throne of the 

House of Orange, William and Mary. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In the preparation of this book the following volumes have 
been chiefly consulted; and are recommended to the young 
reader : 

" Source-Book of American History " {Hart), Macmillan Com- 
pany. 

" Two Centuries of Costume in America" {Alice Morse Enrie), 
Macmillan Company. 

" The Beginners of a Nation " {Edward Eggleston), Appleton. 

" The Transit of Civilization " {Edward Eggleston), Appleton. 

"Students' History of the United States" {CAanning), Mac- 
millan Company. 

" Industrial History of the United States " {Katharine Coman\ 
Macmillan Company. 

« Industrial Evolution of the United States " ( Wright), Chau- 
tauqua Press. 

«' Good Old Times " {Kellogg), Lee & Shepard. 

"Home Life in Colonial Days" {Alice Morse Earle), Mac- 
millan Company. 

"Stepping Stones of American History" (various authors'), 
W. A. Wilde Company. ^ 

" Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times " {Sydney G. 
Fisher), J. B. Lippincott & Co. 

" History of the United States " (for schools) ( John Fiske\, 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

" History of the American People " ( W. Wilson), Harper 
Bros. 

« The Pilgrim Fathers " ( W. Bartlett), Hall, Virtue & Co. 

" The England of Shakespeare " {John Goadby), Cassell & Co. 



308 Bibliography 

«« The Pilgrims in their Three Homes " ( William Eliot Grijis), 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

** Old Virginia and Her Neighbors " {John Fiske), Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 

"The Planting of New England" {John Fisie), Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 



Index 



Agriculture, io8, 120 
Alden, John, 44, 45 
ambition in colonists, 285, 301 
American character, 286, 287, 

302 
amusements, 224-228, 231, 232 
Andros, Governor, 300 
animals, names ior, 279 
Armada, 6 
arms of military, 169 
army, the, 272 
art, 227, 228 
astrology, 192, 194 
astronomy, 192 
authority, respect for, 212 
authors in America, 218 
axe, American, 135, 151 

Backboard, 255 
Bacon, Francis, 22, 277 



botanical doctors, 211 

boys, educating, 257, 261, {see 

education, schools) 
boys, settlers', 144 
Bradford, William, 32, 47, 55, 

Bradstreet, Anne, 218 
breakfast dishes, 172 
Brewster, William, 45 
building, 104 
burgesses, Virginia, 164 
♦• burn," a 137 
Byrd, William, 239, 240 

Callings and trades, 145, 243, 

250 
Calverts, 80-84, {see Baltimore) 
candles, 187, 188 
carpets, 184 
ceremonies, 270 



Bacon, Nathaniel, 240, 271, 290 changed customs, 77 

Balboa, 2 Charles II, 241 

Baltimore, 98 chase, the, 226 

Baltimore, Lord, 79, 82, {see chimneys, 106, 149, 190 

Calverts) children, 127, 128, 180, 244, 

bayberry wax, 188 245, 256, 260, 266 {see edu- 

Berkeley, Governor, 240, 290 cation, boys, school) 

bezoar stone, 210 church going, 175 

bibUography, 307 churns, 153 

bleeding in medicine, 202, 203 Civil War, England, 62, 166 

blockhouses, 170 classes, social, 26, 27, 251, 252, 

" blue laws," Connecticut, 226 258 

classics, the, 229 



bone-setters, 203 

books, theology, 216, 218 

Boston intolerant, 67 



clergy, 272 
clocks, 186 



309 



310 



Index 



cloth, 184 

" code of honor," 258 

cold houses, 172 

" Colonel" in Virginia, 164 

colony, government, 68, 74, 95, 

167 
colony, kinds of government, 84, 

168; schools, 261, 262 
colonists, north and south, iii, 

146 
colors in dress, 179 
Columbus, purpose of, i 
comets, 195 
commissioners from colonies, 

297 
Connecticut founded, 291 
cooking, 142, 190, 191 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1 70 
Copernican system, 193 
corn-meal, 140 
corn-shellers, 152 
Coronado, 4 
Cortez, 3 

costume, 157, 177-180, 244 
" court language," 277 
♦« Croatan," 42 [see Roanoke) 

Dale, Governor, 18 
dancing, 225, 256 ^ 

" Day of Doom," poem, 219 
Delaware, Lord, 18 
de Leon, Ponce, 3 
democracy, beginning of, 260, 

269, 271, 272, 274 
«* deportment," 255 
de Soto, 4 
dialects, 282, 283 
docility of colonists, 212 
Drake, Sir Francis, 5 
drama, 231 
Drayton, Michael, 9 
dress, 233, 234, {see costume) 



drinking, hard, 155, 156, 226, 

286 
drugs, 209, 210, {^see medicine) 
Dudley, Thomas, 63 
Dutch colonists, 85, 86, 90, 106 
" Dutch oven," 190 

«* Eastward Ho ! " play, 36 
education, 192, 220-223, 255, 

262, (^see schools) 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 160 
Endicott, John, 63 
England, under Elizabeth, 32 
English and French colonists, 

298 
English Revolution, 64, (see 

Civil War) 
events, important, 297-300 ; 

table of, 305 

Farms, in New England, 150 

feeling toward England, 213 

feeling toward foreigners, 214 

fences, 150 

fisheries, 56, III, 1 14 

flint and steel, 189 

Florida, early colony, 5 

flower raising, 244 

food, 112, 114, 115, 172, 181 

footwear, 180 

foreigners, feeling toward, 214 

forks, 181 

" Fortune," ship, 55 

Fox, George, 293, {see Quakers) 

Franklin, Benjamin, 259 

French colonists, 94, 298, {^see 

Huguenots) 
furniture, 173, 183- 186 
fur trade, 85, 91-93 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 5 
glass, 182 



Index 



3«i 



Goadby, Edwin, 34 
gold as medicine, 209 
«' Good Old Times," 130 
Gosnold, Captain, 9, 12 
"Great Charter," Virginia, 21 
government, Jamestown, 15, [sde 
colonies) 

Hair-dressing, 177 
Hakluyt's " Voyages," 37 
Hale, Edward Everett, quoted, 

270 
hard times in England, 36 
Harvey, Governor, 289 
health of colonists, 285 
hepatica, 205 
holidays, 156 
Holland soldiers from, 33 
home, settler's, 136 
Hooker, Thomas, 291 
horn-book, 221 
houses, 104, 105, 107, 149 
houses, raising, 224 
housewifery, 256 
Hudson, Henry, 85 
Hudson River, 98 
Huguenots, 300 
" humors," in medicine, 202, 

203, 206 
husking-bees, 224 
Hutchinson, Anne, 293 
hymns, singing, 230 

Illness at Jamestown, 14 
indentured servants, 24 
independence of colonists, 289- 

292 
" Independents," the, 65 
India, passage to, 16, 38, 73 
Indians, American, 40, 53, 116- 
125, 144; corn, 281; feeling 
toward, 214 ; fighting against, 



169, 171, 295; languages, 

281 ; medicine, 2lO 
ingenuity, Yankee, 242 
'* inland sea," 39 
insect-life, origin of, 195 
iron, 106 

Jamestown, 9, 13, 14 
Jonson, Ben, 36 

Kellogg, Rev. Elijah, 129 
Kennebec Colony, 8 
King Philip's War, 29 

Lamps, 189 

landing of Pilgrims, 51-53 
land ownership, 19, 24, 25, 57, 

124, 246, 273 
language, 276-284 
Latin schools, 222 
laws, enforcing, 168 
leather, 152 

Leyden, Pilgrims at, 30 
libraries, colonial, 216, 239 
lighting, 187, 188 
liquor, 147, 155, 156, 226, 286 
log cabins, 142 

" Magnetism," 208 

maize, 280, 281 

manners, 286 

maple sugar, II 3, 1 20 

market-days, 156 

Maryland, 79-83 

Massachusetts Company, 6 1 

matches, 190 

" Mayflower," the, 31, 47, 48, 

51,69 
McLennan, Hugh (a settler), 

131. 

meal times, 174 
medicine, 201-211 



312 



Index 



Merrymount, 294 
militia, 168 
mills, 151, 152 
moccasins, 180 
music, 230, 231, 256 

Names, Scriptural, 174 

natural history, 196 

nature, love of, 212 

negro dialect, 283 

New England life, 242 

New England ways and Vir- 
ginian, 28 

New Netherland, 85-91, 106 

Newport, Captain, 9 

New ways in America, 237, 
238, 242, 268 

New York, 86, 89 

Ornaments, wearing of, 178 

Palisades, 170 

paper, writing, 223 

patchwork, 184 

patroons, 162 

Penn, William, 165 

pens and pencils, 222, (see 
writing) 

Pequot War, 295 

pewter, 182 

Philadelphia, 98 

pies, 172 

pigeons, wild, 139 

Pilgrims, the, 29, 43 ; and Pur- 
itans, 60, 65 

pillion, 148 

pirates, 49 

plantation life, 234, 241 

plays, 36 

Plymouth, 52, 54 

Pocahontas, 23, 278 

portages, 148 



position of women, 254 

poverty, 234, 248 

Powhatan, 279 

preaching, 156 

primers, 222 

printing, 217 

" privilege," 269-276 

products of the colonies, 16, 17, 

55» 86, 97 
Ptolemaic system, 193 
punishments, 162, 163 
Puritan boy, 61 ; settlements, 

64 ; and Pilgrims, 60, 65 

Quakers, 27, 66, 293 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 5, 7, 

30.41 
reading, 174 
rebellion in colonies, 289, (see 

Bacon, Nathaniel) 
Regicides, the, 290 
religious freedom, 83 
Restoration, the, 82, 167 
rich and poor, 249 
" ride and tie," 148 
Roanoke Colony, 6, 41, 42 
roasting-jack, 191 
Rolfe, John, 23, 279 
royal governors, 74, 75, 78, (see 

Andros) 
royalists in Virginia, 164 
rushlights, 188 

Sabbath, the, 175, 176 

Salem, 63, 64 

samplers, 172, 228 

San Domingo, 12 

Sandys, George, 20 ; Sir Edwin, 

Satan, 197 



Index 



313 



262 



Ver- 



" save-all," 188 
schools, 220-223, 244, 26 
Scripture, views' of, 199 
Scriptures, King James' 

sion, 278 
scurvy, 12 

self-governing colonies, 165 
" servant," meanings, 283 
settler, a typical, 132 
settlers, north and south, 59 
sheep-farming, England, 36 
ship-building, 99, 100, 102 
sidewalks, 158 

"signatures," doctrine of, 204 
signs, 158 
singing school, 225 
skin clothing, 178 
slavery, 26 
Smith, John, 10-17, 33, 43. 50» 

72, 238 
smuggling, 96, 100-103 
soap-making, 127 
social classes, 161 
soldiers, 169 
Spanish exploring, 4 
" Spanish marriage," the, 82 
«' Speedwell," the, 31 
spelling-bee, 225 
spermaceti, 188 
spice trade, 39 
spinning, 151, 152 
sports, 224-228, 232 
Standish, Myles, 33, 44,45. 7 ^ J 

Laura, 173 
Stegg, Thomas, 238 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 175 
strangers in towns, 159 
stray animals, 155 
sugar-cutters, 153 
superstitions, 194, 195, 201, 

207, 294 
"sympathy," medicine, 207 



Table-manners, 181, 183 

taxation, 97, loi, 275 

teaching, 263, (see schools) 

theology, 196, I97 

timber, 97, 98 

tinder-box, 189 

titles, 274 

tobacco, 23 

tools, 138 

town life, 70, 109, 112, 160, 

256, 257 
trade and commerce, 96, 98, 

157, (see fur trade, fisheries, 

ship-building, products of 

colonies) 
trapping, 93 
traveling, 148, 233, (see " ride 

and tie ") 
trenchers, 181 
«' Turkey," 280 
tutors, 223 

Union of colonies, 295, 296 

Virginia, 7, 8, 11, 13, 176; 

voyage to, 12; boyhood in, 

265 
visitors from Old World, 232 
voyages, early, 46-48 
" Voyages," Ilakluyt's, 37 

Wagons, 149 
wampum, 89 
Ward, Nathaniel, 218 
warfare, Indian, 76 
warming houses, 190, 191 
warming-pan, 191 
Washington, George, 299 
wealth, acquiring, 247-250 
West India Company, 85 
Weymouth, 70, (see Merry- 
mount) 



3H 



Index 



whale-oil, i88 

Wigglesworth, Michael, 219 
wigs, 177 

William of Orange, 81 
Williams, Roger, 66, 290, 293 
winter sports, 232 
Winthrop, John, 63, 270, 291 



witchcraft, 198-200 
women, 125-127, 179^ 254 
wooden ware, 182 
wounds, treatment of, 208 
wrestling, 225 
writing, 222, 263, 264 



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